


Of Whom I'd Never Boast

by litra



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Confessions, Episode Related, First Dates, Fix-It, Idiots in Love, Lisa's powers from the comics, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Related, Plot, Post-Flashpoint (DCU), Prophecy, Prophetic Dreams, Slow Burn, Team Up, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:40:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 58,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litra
Summary: Leonard Snart is an ordinary man. He has an office job, a crappy apartment with a leaking faucet the landlord refuses to fix, a cat. So why does he remember a gun that froze his fingers even as he pulled the trigger? Or a team of thieves who might have been legends or legends who might have been thieves? Why does he remember staring down the Flash and smiling?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song Ghost by Phish
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful Beta formerlyknownasyay who has helped me keep on track and navigate a dozen minor plot holes

Leonard Snart died at 4:51pm on a Thursday.

 

He had been sitting at his desk checking over the schematics for the latest upgrade to the KOIN tower when it happened. He died. He knew it like he knew his shoe size, or the fact that he was allergic to walnuts. It just was. His heart was still beating. He wasn't breathing, but that was only because he’d sucked in a gasp of surprise and was still holding it. An idle thought trailed across his mind that  _ weren't you supposed to have your life flash before your eyes? _ , and as if summoned, he was somewhere else.

His vision was full of blue light. His arm was going numb, but he had to keep holding on. A voice spoke out of memory about heroes and doing the right thing. He wanted to laugh, not a good laugh either, a middle finger to fate laugh. Except he was having enough trouble just breathing. There was a countdown in his head. He wondered if it was enough. All of time and it came down to a thirty second dash to get out of the building – well, for the others. Power started built in his fingertips. Those bastards made it into the room and he snarled at them. 

“There are no strings on me,” he said, and he died.

Len jerked his arm back and his chair wobbled, spinning half around and running into the wall. He blinked at the dappled surface.

He was alive  _ dead _ .

He was here in his office  _ at the end of time, and also dead _ .

He was Leonard Snart, an architect and still pathetically single in his late thirties _ Legend, still single and likely to stay that way since he was dead. _

He was just a regular guy. 

The voice of the dead guy in his head didn’t even bother to respond to that one. He got the sense of someone giving him a cold stare and more memories slid past behind his eyes. These were more distant, proper memories rather than the last futile second of the end of a life. Of course that didn’t make them any less real. 

The slightly uncomfortable heat of a heavy coat in the middle of summer. A voice in his ear telling him they were screwed. A flash of red as the hero made himself known. His gun, a heavy but comfortable weight in his hand. The world turning blue as he pulled his goggles down. The air itself turning to frost as he pulled the trigger. 

Len blinked at the wall. It was the same off-white it had always been. He could still feel it. The cold creeping up his arm as he held down the trigger. The blue, not from his goggles, but from the device that had ended his life. He reminded himself very firmly that he wasn’t dead  _ yes he was _ .

He pushed the chair back to it’s proper place in front of his desk. The little blue light that proved his monitor was on blinked up at him. He tried to focus on the screen, but his eyes kept getting pulled down to that little light.

What was wrong with him?  _ Other than the fact that he was dead _ Was it stress? He’d never had hallucinations like this before. If there was anything he could count on it was his own mind. Except maybe not anymore. No, he’d dozed off or he’d been staring at that little blue light for too long  _ or he was dead _ . He rubbed at his eyes and looked at the clock. It was 5:12. He’d been lost in his own head for 21 minutes. He really should try to get some more work done before he left for the day. There was a flaw in the design and he knew he could find it. They were set to be presented next Tuesday, final confirmation before construction could begin. If he didn’t find it before then….

The words on the screen had stopped making sense. He took a slow breath, stretching his neck. It had to be stress, or maybe dehydration  _ or maybe he was dead _ . His coffee from that morning had made it into the trash hours ago, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d refilled his water bottle. 

Sara spotted him on the way to the break room.  _ Not the right Sara, she was on the waverider. She had to be. He’d died for it. _ This Sara had her coat over one arm and her purse in the other, clearly on her way out. 

“Oh, did you need something sir?”

He shook his head, a confident smile sliding over his features, “No, thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She returned the smile and headed for the elevator. The minute her back was turned he dropped the mask, and that… that’s wasn’t right. He’d never been able to hide his emotions like that.  _ Except it wasn’t for her. _

Memories flooded over him. A woman in white leather. Long Blond hair and a bow staff. The perfect setup for him to deliver a punch line. A cold fit to burn and out of his control. A Kiss. A desperate plan to rescue his crew. His death.

Len was leaning against the table in the break room. There was no logical reason for his heart to be pounding in his chest or his hands to be shaking because no matter what he remembered he wasn’t actually dead.

The clock on the wall was ticking away the seconds and he focused on it. It had always been two minutes and forty one seconds fast. Just fast enough that people ended their break slightly early without realizing it. It was a manipulation that had always rubbed him the wrong way. He’d never taken the time to fix it though, because knowing it was fast and by how much, gave him just that little bit of an edge.

He needed a drink.

The voice in his head fervently agreed.

Len hadn’t been to Saints and Sinners in a dog's age. It was on his way home, but it didn’t have the best reputation. When he was younger that was the point. He’d grown out of that. Now when he drank he went to hotel bars where everyone assumed he would be gone the next day. And yet his bike pulled to a stop outside the dive bar. He kicked the stand into place and leaned on the handlebars.

Looking up at the flickering neon and the dirty windows, Len felt a thrum of something in his chest. The dead guy in his head thought that going in there and ordering a drink was a very good idea. That alone should have been enough of a reason not to. There were people who he did not need to run into again, the Santinis, his father’s old friends,  Mick.

Memories bubbled up again, and this time he managed to bite out a curse before they swamped him. Mick staring into the lighter Len had stolen for him. Mick with his goggles down, wearing some kind of fireman’s coat as he pointed a hand-cannon at a streak of lightning. Him and Mick confronting the family. Mick leaning back in his chair a beer in hand as he pulled Len out of his own head with a wisecrack about the plan. Mick grumbling about how Lisa was flirting with the enemy too now. Mick falling to the ground as Len was forced to knock him out for his own good. Mick laying in the med bay, covered in bruises. Mick offering up his life. Len taking his place.

_ My partner. _

A hole opened up inside him. How could he feel this strongly about someone who he hadn’t known for years.

Len didn’t have a partner. He’d thought,  _ maybe _ , once upon a time. Mick had saved his life in Juvie and for a while they’d talked about how they were going to run the city. He’d thought he’d had it all worked out, but their very first job had gone south. 

Mick had lost control. 

The fear in his eyes after, had been staggering. He’d stood there in their safe house shaking his head and muttering about how he had to be better than that.

“We will be better,” Len had said. “Next time it’ll be perfect.”

Mick had been gone the next morning.

When Len had realized Mick wasn’t coming back, he’d thrown the ring into the river.

After that he’d managed to get out of the life. There was no point to living a life where he had to constantly be looking over his shoulder, not without someone to watch his back. Plus his dad had gotten out again. Len had made it a point to get as far away from Lewis as he could.

Smoke.

Cigarette smoke.

He came back to himself. Still outside Saints and Sinners, thank God. If he’d been driving…. The sun had dropped behind the buildings, so he’d lost time again. He catalogued himself and estimated that it’d been at least fifteen minutes. He didn’t like it.

_ Sloppy. _

A man had come out of the bar and was watching him, blowing smoke into the wind. Len didn’t recognise him,  _ bruiser, prison tat, but his hands are neat, mob _ but he didn’t need to. The guy was already looking at him like he was nuts. He needed a plan, needed to figure out what was going on, and as much as he wanted one, a drink wouldn’t help with that.

_ That’d come after, when he tried to forget it again. _

And more than anything he needed the strange voice out of his head.

Len kicked the bike back to life and focused on the road until he was safely back in his apartment.


	2. Chapter 2

Len didn’t let the tension in his shoulders ease until he was safely behind his apartment door.

“I’m not dead.” It was becoming a mantra, as if each small task was monumental and just making it home alive was an achievement.

 _Yes I am._ The voice hesitated, _or at least I should be._

Len covered his eyes and took a breath. He wanted to shout, to argue the point, but he was pretty sure arguing with the voices in his head really would make him crazy.

Leaving the lights off he stripped out of his jacket and tie, and headed for the bathroom. Being able to focus on doing something seemed to help. He took a shower, cold, then hot, then cold again when the water ran out. It wasn’t actually that late when he got out, but dinner and the TV or internet weren’t going to be enough.

There was a bottle in the back of his medicine cabinet.

_Running from nightmares now?_

He cupped his hands under the faucet and swallowed the sleeping pill to spite himself.

He didn’t need the pills often. He hated when he needed to rely on them, but they did the job. Within ten minutes his vision was dimming, color draining away from the edges. He let go, and was swept under.

The dream started as a memory.

He’d been three maybe four. When he tried to piece things together he knew things had been better back then, but it was all the vague facts that he’d learned later, except for that memory. Even then, he’d relived it enough times he wasn’t sure if it was real or some embellished fantasy anymore.

The toddler shuffled down the hall in his footie pajamas. Len turned around looking for the stranger, his father’s friend, but no one else was there.

“I came down to get a glass of water. I’m Leo, are you friends with my daddy?”

“Kind of,” Len said right on script.

“I think my daddy’s sleeping.”

The first step he took towards the kid shook, then he was on his knees and his voice was quivering with emotion. He could remember wondering if his dad’s friend was about to cry. He could remember pushing down the pain with the hope. It had to change. He had to change it.

“Can I tell you something Leo? It’s important.”

He wasn’t sure if he was speaking or listening.

“Don’t ever let anyone hurt you, ever. Not here, and especially not here.” He tapped his chest.

“No matter what you have to look out for yourself, okay? Understand?”

There was the sound of a gun cocking -- like the cap on the switch to the bomb in Lisa’s neck.

His finger was on the trigger pointed down the hallway to where the Flash stood. Barry was alive and he didn’t know if he should be relieved or not. He’d suspected, it was never that easy, not with him. Lewis held up the trigger.

“Shoot him son.”

He didn’t want to and not just because of the deal. He liked the game he and Flash played and he hated Lewis, hated the order, the calm way he said it, like a forgone conclusion. He hated the implications.

But Lisa… Lisa had been the only good part of his life for so long. She was his sister, truer family then Lewis had ever been.

“Kill him or you’ll never see your sister alive.”

He didn’t even care, you could hear it in his words. His own daughter and he didn’t care.

The cold gun was heavy, or maybe his hand was shaking.

Flash lifted a hand to his ear in a blur, “Lisa’s safe.”

Lewis turned and his expression was flashing through emotions, probably trying to find an angle that would save his skin.

Len pulled the trigger.

Len pulled the trigger and the cowboy fell over dead. _You’re welcome._

Len pulled the trigger and the people in the theatre scattered, a red blur trying to keep up.

Len pulled the trigger laying down cover fire.

Len pulled the trigger. _Well if you’re out, you’re out._

Len pulled the trigger and froze a patch of ground to Mick’s left. Before he could react Len stepped forward and slammed the but of the gun against the side of Mick’s head. _I am sorry Mick_ , he thought, and _I’ll come back for you_. Except he hadn’t. Mick’d found them first.

Len was cuffed to a pipe, eyes dancing over the room. He shouldn’t be alive, but he was going to fight tooth and nail since he was. He started talking to fill the silence and distract Chronos and maybe because he was a tiny bit terrified.

“So, ah, what’s so special about me, apart from my sparkling personality. Back on the waverider you could have taken your boy Rip, but you took me instead. Why?” He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. Questions like that never had good answers.

Chronos didn’t answer and that only drew his attention.

“If you’re going to kill me you could at least tell me what’s going on.”

Finally he turned around, his synthesized voice growling, “you should have figured it out by now.” The leather of his glove creaked as he reached up and removed the helmet.

It was Mick. it had always been Mick and that meant he’d failed. Failed before he’d even started.

“After all, I am supposed to be the dumb one.”

And wasn’t that a kick in the teeth. They’d played their roles well. Mick was less focused, he worked on instinct rather than planning things out, but they both knew full well he wasn’t dumb.

“How.”

“Mick didn’t answer.

He just… he couldn’t. Len’s cold mask cracked and he let the anger bubble up.

“I think I deserve to know what the hell is going on here!” By the end he was shouting into Mick’s face, the cuffs rattling against the piping. Somehow though, Mick remained cool as ice and wasn’t that an ironic reversal.

“You deserve nothing.”

“Says the guy who sold us out to pirates! When I dropped you off in that forest I meant to kill you, that was the plan”

“You should have stuck with the plan, and done me a favor.”

Mick wasn’t looking at him anymore, he was looking inwards.

“I may not have trusted you on the ship with the team, but I always, _always_ , was coming back for you!”

“Seems like one of us lost track of time.”

His voice broke, “how long did you…”

Mick’s voice rose to a shout. “By the time they found me, I had nearly lost my mind. I was strangling rats to survive.”

When his voice dropped again Len broke a little bit more.

“When who found you?”

Mick looked away, “The time masters. They took me to a place called the Vanishing Point.”

The time masters.

There they were, all lined up like a firing squad.

“No, shut it down!”

Blue power raced up his arm. _He knew this, he’d been here before._

“Shut it down!” They shouted.

“There are no strings on me.”

_Oh, this is when I died._

 

Len woke with a gasp, tangled in his sheets.

He was dead.

 _He was alive_.

He felt like he’d run a marathon, or gone up against Barry without his gun. He hoped they at least got away with… no. He wasn’t. He’d been having flashes. That was the dream, the other… what? Version of himself?  Was he one of those metahumans now? If so visions of things that never happened was a crappy power. Speed or phasing, even steel skin like whatever his name was, but this? This was a joke.

No. It hadn’t happened. Maybe somewhere else, some _when_ else, but he wasn’t Captain Cold. He wasn’t a supervillain, and visions or not, that wasn’t going to change.

Len took a slow breath and looked at the clock on his nightstand. He’d forgotten to set his alarm, but thank’s to the nightmare, he had plenty of time.

_That’s all it was, just a nightmare…_

He wasn’t going to let whatever this was ruin the life he’d made.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. This one necessitated a lot of editing.

Len didn’t like his job overly much. Oh, architecture was great, he was good at it, good at analyzing structures and finding the balancing point in how everything went together.  He unconsciously memorized weights and tensile strength the way he’d learned to memorize timetables as a kid. The work was a beautifully complex puzzle. It was the office that he hated.

He’d gotten a late start in life. A sealed juvenile record and a G.E.D. rather than an actual diploma hadn’t ingratiated him to any institutes of higher learning. He’d had no prospects and no resources, but anything criminal would have gotten back to Lewis…

_ Lewis threatening Lisa. Lewis threatening him. A beer bottle and a bloody fist. A first job when he was far too young, but didn’t know any better. Small hands, and clever, except not clever enough. His own father laying the blame at his feet. _

All that had happened, it was right, or close enough for the point to stand. He’d gone to juvi, met Mick. He’d left.  _ Stayed. _ After things went bad with Mick he didn’t have anyone to watch his back, and anything solo would have drawn too much attention, so theft was out. 

It had been a fluke.

He’d been working construction. Someone up the chain had ordered the wrong consistency cement. Len, as the new guy, had been sent to deliver the bad news. Except when he’d gotten to the small onsite office the place he was brought up short by the argument echoing from the shift supervisor’s phone. The owner was throwing a fit about the architect. The architect was condemning the contractor. The contractor was sniping about the electrician and all of them were blaming the union rep.

The shift supervisor looked up from where he was rubbing his temples and barked into the phone, seemingly uncaring if they were paying enough attention to hear him.

“I’ll send someone over to get the new plans.” He hung up. “Congratulations kid, you get to meet the management.”

A twenty minute ride across town to the main office later: Len had walked in on the in-person argument, which was apparently still in progress. He’d lingered on the edges, exchanging sympathetic looks with the other two secretaries (interns?) who were being forced to endure the madness.

It took him about ten minutes to understand the root of the problem. The designs had been drawn up at some unspecified point in the past, before the safety regulations had been updated. Possibly there had been a filing error. Now, they had to get things up to scratch, and refile everything without doubling the cost of the project. 

A further half hour later, Len had managed to snag an open chair but otherwise no progress had been made. Len’s opinion of the project manager was dropping by the minute. If this was his crew… but it wasn’t. The blueprints were laid out over the conference table, and someone had left a notepad behind so he started working over the problem. After all he wasn’t involved in the squabbles and biases that these people kept falling back on. He wasn’t going to get back to work until someone fixed it and no one else seemed inclined.

At some point the man next to him had glanced down and stopped speaking. 

At some point Len’s sketches had been redrawn on the whiteboard. 

At some point someone had brought in their laptop and checked the calculations.

It wasn’t perfect. He didn’t have the background fundamentals necessary to work out the kinks. That was what the rest of them were for. 

When they’d finally broken off, Mr Drox had pulled him aside, and thanked him. Len had bluffed his way through to a full job offer.

For the next few years it was night classes and office politics and occasional bits of brilliance like that first day. 

He loved the work, but hated the job.

So when he dragged himself into the office that Friday, feeling like he’d had no sleep and jumping at shadows, he didn’t make much of an effort to be cordial.

By lunch he had snapped at four people, somehow gotten into the habit of flexing his hands,  _ do not pickpocket your coworkers, _ and still failed to find the fault in the designs for the KOIN tower. 

He’d also had no fewer than four flashbacks to the other life. The last of them, had been in the middle of the men’s room and he’d come back to himself with the sink overflowing and Ryan from marketing giving him the crazy eye. Even here, a place as different from that life as he could imagine, he couldn’t keep the memories down.

He wasn’t going to make it through the afternoon.

No, he could handle this. He just needed to find a balance. He needed to control it. He needed someone to talk to, someone who would understand. 

He needed that drink. 

No one commented when he grabbed his coat --  _ not the parka, that’s still on the Waverider _ \-- and left an hour early. A part of him wondered if he really looked that bad. Another part wondered if they even noticed.

 

Saturday was hell. He hadn’t been able to sleep again, even with the pills. They just made the dreams  _ memories _ more vivid. The smell of coffee summoned a memory of a hideout and a table covered in blueprints. The cat that lived in the alley and who sometimes came around for food- scratched his hand, mirroring old scars. His hand caught in a panel, wires and the corner of something metal stabbing at him as his father yelled about the job. 

He’d tried to watch TV, except he couldn’t always tell when he was watching the screen and when it was actually the backs of his eyelids.

He’d hoped that over time, the memories would fade, or at least he’d stop getting hit with new ones, but no luck. His skin was starting to feel like it wasn’t really his. He’d look down at his hands or trace his chest in the shower, completely baffled at the scars or the blank skin where scars should be.

If Saturday was Hell, Monday was a slog through purgatory. He nearly locked himself out of his computer because he couldn’t remember which password he used. He went to meetings and had to bluff his way through, because he couldn’t remember what the meeting was supposed to be about. No one asked him what was wrong. No one seemed to want to talk to him. He couldn’t remember if that was normal or not.

 

Len was shoved back into himself when the car skidded to a stop, horn blaring. The driver was yelling something, and people were once again giving him strange looks, some concerned, others fearful. He’d stepped off the curb.  He had been sure a second ago that the crosswalk sign was green, but then again, he’d been sure of a lot of things until recently. 

He stumbled backwards, back up onto the sidewalk. The rest of the after-work commuters turned back to their own lives now that no one was about to be run over. He found a lamp post and used it to keep himself upright.

This wasn’t working.

He wasn’t afraid of dying but this….  _ Strings _ . He wasn’t in control anymore. At this point he almost didn’t care which set of memories won out, as long as he could get back to his life.  _ Whatever life that was _ . 

He flagged down the next cab he saw and directed it to the nearest hospital. He didn’t actually think this was a medical issue, but maybe they could give him something to keep him on his feet while he found and dealt with the actual issue.

He’d forgotten how much he hated hospitals. 

They put him in an uncomfortable beige chair and told him to wait. They put him in an uncomfortable gown and pointed loud clunky machines at him before telling him to wait some more. They told him the initial results were inconclusive, and that they could refer him to a specialist if he wanted to make an appointment, and if he could just fill out this form, yes another one. 

He retreated at some point searching for food. The vending machine had the sandwich labeled as ham, but one sniff at the bread gave him flashbacks to the slop they served in prison.

This time he at least managed to get to a chair. When he came back to himself there was a nurse kneeling in front of him. This led to another round of tests.

None of it helped.

This was a bad idea.

He was in the process of trying to sign himself out, when the screaming started.

He didn’t understand what was happening at first. There was no context, or only the wrong context. He looked around, almost expecting to see an ambulance, and some soap opera style nurse run out in scrubs a little too tight. The faded plastic chairs and informative posters hadn’t changed, but the scattering of people were no longer stuck in listless stupors. A young boy pointed towards the doors, eyes wide as he tugged on his mother’s hand. A man in a wheelchair raised a shaking hand to his lips. The nurse at the desk was scrambling for her phone. 

“Meta!” she was screaming, “We’re being attacked!”

That’s when his brain kicked in and finally recognised the shapes outside.

There was a ship, a tanker, rising over the parking lot and a figure arms outstretched and wrapped in pink and purple light. One person moved, and then everyone was rushing for the doors. Doors that weren’t opening.  As an architect he was insulted; those kinds of protocols worked in direct opposition to the safety regulations that were fundamental for hospitals, metahuman threat or not. 

A woman ran past, pushing a man in a wheelchair. He recognised her. He didn’t know her, but she was Iris West. The part of his mind he was starting to think of as Captain Cold had a whole file on her, and right at the top was the word  _ Protected _ . 

He went after her, elbowing people out of the way. She came up against the closed doors, just as a streak of yellow lightning blitzed across the parking lot.

_ Flash. _

The crowd pointed. One person started a cheer. _ Stupid, it’s not as if the fight’s won _ . His hand went to his belt, his leg, where he’d never worn a holster. Not that that mattered, he still missed the familiar weight.

There was a second streak of lightning.  _ That was new. _ Then Barry was back, all red leather and her charged aura. He stopped in front of the meta.  _ God she’s just a kid _ . Trying to talk her down maybe?

Len remembered standing in her place.

_ Strolling towards Barry down a street he might as well have owned. “The Scarlet Speedster. Any preference on how you’d like to die? The Flame, or the Frost?” getting shoved up against the mantle in Barry’s living room. Seeing Barry vibrate with tension and knowing he was in control. Getting pulled off his bike in the middle of the road. Suddenly standing in the forest. “Good to see you… Barry.” _

For once the memories didn’t knock him out. He pulled them in, wrapping them around his pounding heart and pressed against the glass. It was cool under his hands. It felt good. He felt good. Not nearly as good as it would feel out there, but better than he’d felt in a long time.

Whatever Flash was saying must have had an effect, because the ship slowly lowered back towards the water. Flash was holding the girl. She must have been one of the good ones then, misunderstood rather than criminally dangerous.

The doors finally opened since there was no longer a need to evacuate the building. Len pressed against the glass letting everyone push past him. Flash looked over at them, and for a moment Len thought he was looking at him, but no just Iris. 

Another speedster zipped in, and spoke to Barry. He nodded and took the Meta’s hand. Then the three of them were gone.

Len stumbled out onto the sidewalk and gulped in the air of his city. He should have felt helpless in the face of those titans. Instead it just felt right. 

He walked back to where he’d parked his bike that morning, what seemed like a lifetime ago. It took nearly fort minutes and by the time he turned over the engine he’d come to two conclusions. First, going along with this thing had done a lot more than fighting it. Second, If he was going to figure out, whatever this was, he needed to stop thinking about it like any other civilian.


	4. Chapter 4

 

The parking lot behind STAR labs only had two cars in it. Weeds crept up around the edges, pushing their way through the concrete. He’d never attempted to steal from STAR labs in either life. After all, there was no point when they weren’t supposed to be making things, not like Mercury or Kord. The constant Flash sightings made it less appealing too. Still it was the principle of the thing. He’d spent all morning psyching himself up for this and he didn’t even have to pick the lock.

“You people need better security.” Len announced as he walked into the cortex.

Four people jumped, spinning to face him. Barry tensed where he’d been leaning over the desk, knees bent preparing to run even though he wasn’t in uniform. Wells cursed under his breath, standing and pressing himself back against the desk. The other two, Cisco and Caitlin if Len’s memory wasn’t playing tricks on him, simply looked confused.

“Snart?” Barry’s voice was a low rumble.

“Relax, as fun as it would be, I’m not here to fight.” He lifted his hands and let his jacket fall open, showing he was unarmed. “I need your help.”

The magic words.

Barry relaxed, his expression turning concerned. “Oh?”

Wells turned to Barry with one eyebrow raised. “Barry?”

“What?”

Wells put both hands flat on the desk and leaned over it, somehow managing to focus on the speedster while still keeping an eye on Len. “I realize I’ve been gone, and things have changed, but the last time I was here, that man was breaking out of prison and taunting you with exploding presents. I doubt things could have changed that much.”

“Woah, wait,” Cisco held up a hand, “That was the Trickster, not… whoever this guy is.”

Barry nodded slowly, “But Snart warned me about it.”

“Wait, Snart? As in Lisa Snart? Golden Glider, leader of the Rogues… Snart?”

Len froze his spine going ramrod stiff. She was there, always there at the edges of his thoughts, but now she was front and center. 

_ Lisa scared and rocking in his arms, crying and desperate not to make a sound. Lisa pouting and asking where her gun was. A girl’s got to defend herself. Lisa at fourteen, too small to properly see over the wheel of the crappy car he’d stolen that week, but insisting he teach her how to drive anyway.  _

_ Lisa standing in the doorway to his childhood room, not really understanding why her brother was leaving or that he wasn’t coming back. _

_ He’d never known Lisa in this lifetime. He’d left when she was barely five years old.  _

It was his single biggest regret.

Len pulled in a ragged breath. There was an arm around his waist, holding him up.

“You okay?” Barry’s voice was low and full of concern. His face was only inches away from Len’s own. He was rather abruptly reminded how bright the kids eyes were. His gaze dropped to Barry’s mouth, lips turned down in concern and parted slightly.

“I…” Len had to clear his throat. “I need your help.”

Barry’s jaw set and he nodded. He manhandled Len into a chair and moved to stand in front of him, arms crossed. 

“Alright, tell me what happened. Are the other Legends okay?”

Len shook his head then shrugged. “I don’t know, that’s part of the problem.” He looked around the room. Wells was still openly sceptical, but Cisco and Caitlin just looked curious. That was an unexpected bonus; he hadn’t kidnaped and threatened them in this timeline.

He started with the visions, how they didn’t match up with his memories, but were just as vivid. How he knew things, he couldn’t possibly know. Cisco and Caitlin weren’t happy but didn’t seem all that surprised when he told them he knew about Barry’s secret. Barry was able to confirm a lot of what he remembered from the other timeline, so at least he wasn’t any more certifiable then the rest of them.

“Okay, so before Flashpoint, Snart was a Supervillain named Captain Cold. You guys fought a bunch, and sometimes helped each other out. Then he got recruited to go time traveling. And none of that happened in this universe so now he’s having temporal backlash because…” Cisco waved a hand at the room. “He doesn’t have Vibe powers does he? That’s my thing.”

“I don’t think so…. Flashpoint?” Len asked.

“Barry broke the timeline.”

Barry winced. “I went back in time and stopped a supervillain from killing my mom. It created a parallel timeline, but I started to forget. I had to go back and fix it, or…” he shook his head. “It changed things.” He men Len’s eyes, then looked away. His whole posture was wrong, tucked into himself, shoulders slumped. He’d even stopped pacing, the restless energy that was so much a part of him, draining away.

“Your mother was killed?” Len’s voice was rough, he wanted to say he was sorry. That he knew how it felt. That he’d lost his mom too, then a second mom when Lisa’s had left, but it wouldn’t come out.

Barry nodded, “When I was 11.”

That… it didn’t fit. He didn’t want to tell Barry that his mother’s death wasn’t important, but the speedster was a lot younger then him. Len settled back in his chair, and carefully reached out for the other memories. He’d done a lot of research on Barry Allen once he’d learned the Flash’s identity. His age was the least of it.

Barry had been born in 1989. His mother had been killed in 2000. Len had been 24. Except in this timeline, he’d left home at 15. Whatever was happening to him, it wasn’t Barry’s fault.

“Snart?” Barry asked. He’d snapped out of it, or at least his posture was back to being the upstanding Hero that Len knew… had known before….

“Nothing Scarlet. Just trying to figure out what to do next.” Len’s voice had an extra helping of the Central slums drawl that he’d worked so hard to unlearn, in this timeline.

“Well, I’d like to take some blood, and do some brain scans,” Caitlin offered. “If this is being caused by a meta power we’ll be able to tell, and if it’s not then we may be able to figure out what your brain is tapping into.”

Len started to nod but his stomach made a loud gurgling sound. “Ah, sorry. All I’ve had is a cup of coffee today. After Lunch?”

“Sounds like a plan to me. I could use some extra calories.” Barry said with a smile.

“Pizza or burgers?” Len asked, because a lunch date with his sort-of-but-not-really enemy was possibly the least strange thing to happen to him so far.

They ended up hitting the food carts by the riverside park before walking down to the Veterans Memorial fountain. They found a bench where the wind would only blow the spey at them occasionally and sat, Len with his gyro and Barry with a stack of fifteen quickly vanishing, fully loaded hot-dogs. It was just turning over to the noon hour, and the day was nice enough to entice the office drones out for their lunch break. Before all this Len would probably have been one of them, if he wasn’t working through his lunch, or trying to fit in a lunch meeting to convince someone that he was right about the weight load or the suppliers or some other stupid little detail.

“I’m sorry.” 

He looked up. Barry was down to four hot-dogs but he’d slowed down, eating at a normal pace now. His shoulders were drooping, and he didn’t try to meet Len’s eye.

“Last I checked, I was the one asking for help Scarlet.” the nickname slipped out, before Len could think to stop it. He didn’t get to tease this version of Barry. They didn’t actually have that connection, or maybe they did, who could judge?

“But… It’s my fault. I didn’t think. Now Dante’s dead, and Iris and Joe only just started talking again. I have this new coworker…. I thought I’d figured out all the changes, but I never even considered your life. You were a hero, you saved the world, the whole timeline with the Legends and I took that away….” He looked down at the latest hot dog, idly peeling back the paper wrapper. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

“Snart--”

“No, I don’t want your pity or guilt. I’m not something you have to atone for. I’m… This is my fault, not yours.” there was no pretending away the emotions in his words.

“Snart.--”

Barry always had been good at pushing his buttons. “Len” It wasn’t quite a shout, but it was forceful enough to make Barry stop talking. “Snart is his name. My father's name. I ran away from home when I was 15 and I’ve done my best to leave that man behind me. The last thing I want is to be known by his name.” He’d killed him. He’d killed his own father, and hadn’t felt an ounce of guilt over it. Except in this time he hadn’t. Lewis was still out there presumably. He almost wanted to track the bastard down, just to kill him again, but no, that was Cold talking…. 

“But,” Barry hesitated, “it is still your name? I mean, you didn’t change it? Have I been calling you the wrong thing this whole time and you didn’t tell me? God, I’m such an ass, I should have thought--”

Len cut him off with a hand, “No, Barry, I’m still…” He breathed slowly, counting heartbeats and forcing his mask back in place. “I considered it, but it always felt like running away, besides, what would I change it to?” His hand settled down on Barry’s knee. It should have felt wrong, but it didn’t. He and Barry hadn’t been anything like that before, he knew that, but….

“Okay, Len, But still...” Barry said.

“It’s not your fault. I ran away long before your mom was killed. You, well, you might have changed little things, but you didn’t change everything. I did that all on my own.”

Len took his hand back. Barry quietly worked his way through another hot-dog while waiting for Len to make up his mind about what to say.

“I have a lot of regrets. Everyone does I suppose, but I actually had a chance to fix it. When I was 3 a man came to my house. I came to my house. I crossed my own timeline. This life, It’s what I wanted. It’s not perfect of course, nothing is, but I’m…”

Len shook his head. He looked down at his hands. They seemed wrong somehow, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. 

“I’d like to think I’m a decent man here. These hands have never killed anyone. I got away from my father. I worked up from nothing, I proved myself every step of the way. I have a good job in a field I actually do like. My apartment may be a crap hole, but I have a nice chunk of savings. I’d like to find a piece of land somewhere, design a home from the ground up. Make it perfect.

“Except all the bad wishes came true too. The ‘I wish I didn’t have to look after a little girl’ and the ‘I wish I didn’t have to deal with Mick’s fires’; the ones you regret as soon as you think them.  It’s like in those stories. I got everything I wanted, but I had to give up the only things that mattered to get it.”

He managed to keep his voice from breaking, but only by focusing on how his nails were digging into his his thighs. 

“I left so I could have this life, so he could never hurt me. So he hurt her instead. Lisa is… I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her since she was four, maybe five. I have no idea where Mick is--” 

Len had to grit his teeth at the latest flood of memories.

Barry had a hand on his shoulder. “Len? The vibes again?”

He managed to nod. Barry offered him a water bottle from somewhere and he took it, sipping slowly. 

“I know how you feel. It was the same, seeing my mom again. All my friends at STAR labs, Iris and Joe, even you. I looked for you once, but you weren’t in the books.” Barry was leaning forward elbows on his knees, hands laced in front of his mouth. His eyes were open, understanding even if his lower lip was sticking out in a small pout.

“I haven’t looked since I fixed things. Maybe I can find him, Mick, I mean. I could check anyway, and I have this friend over in Star City who is amazing at that kind of thing.”

Len met Barry’s gaze, held it. Their faces were only inches away again. “Thank you.”

This time it was Barry who looked away, his cheeks flushing, “Yeah, no problem. We should probably get back to the lab. Caitlin will want to do those tests….”

“Yeah.” Len stood, crumpling his lunch wrapper into a ball. 

He’d been sitting on his hands long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some background...  
> So I'm working on an original story that involves time travel and some of the ideas bled over into this. In that story there's a rule about three degrees of separation. You need at least three events to change the timeline. In this story those events are Len going back and talking to his younger self, Mick giving his younger self a warning not to end up like him, and Barry creating flashpoint. It was enough to let Len have a different life in the new post-flashpoint universe. There are other little things that changed, but mostly time wants to happen. In those cases where the timeline needed a Captain Cold stand in, Lisa was there. I don't want to give anything away, but you can assume she stole the diamond, and took out the Mob and all the other things from season one and two. Barry (and Wells) doesn't remember this because he remembers the old timeline, but Cisco and Caitlin are aware of the Golden Glider, rather then Captain Cold.


	5. Chapter 5

Caitlin settled on her stool in the medical area, leaving Len to perch on the end of the bed. It felt like any other tedious doctor visit, and he was frankly getting tired of it. Caitlin had had him strip off his shirt, ignoring his discomfort and spent several hours poking and prodding. Half the tests took time, so here he was, the following morning getting the results.

“Well, you do have the metagene, but it’s not active. Do you remember where you were during the particle accelerator explosion?”

“Which time?” he smiled, thought back, “in this timeline I think I was at home. I remember the power going out, and being angry at my landlord.”

“So, not a stressful situation, that could have affected things. You have higher than average blood pressure but other then that, a clean bill of health, physically. The MRI, well, I’m still not sure what’s causing it but your brain activity is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It shares similarities with both Barry when he’s close to top speed, and Cisco when he’s vibing.”

“You made both of them go through an MRI while using their powers?” He lifted an eyebrow. He didn’t have a lot of memories of Caitlin but she was managing to impress him.

“It wasn’t that hard to get those two to show off.”

“Not you though.”

She looked up from the tablet sharply, “Excuse me?” 

Len read the fear in her eyes. He’d seen it before, that tension had once been directed at him. She hadn’t had powers then, he was sure, but now….

“Thermostat’s set to 80 fahrenheit. Bit hot for the average office, or it should be, but I’m not exactly tempted to take off my jacket.” he kept his tone light, just testing the waters. He didn’t know what he was expecting. He had no stake in this, one way or the other, and maybe that was the point.

The tension in her spine turned to iron, and her voice turned to ice. “It must be broken, I’ll add it to Cisco’s to do list.”  

Len slipped off the gurney, slowly approaching both her and the door. His fingers trailed along the edge of the counter, barely touching.

“I don’t know all the… details of what happened to the Flash in this timeline.” His voice had slipped down into that drawl again. She was watching him, but he didn’t meet her eyes, gaze trailing over the room, assessing.

She stepped to the side, leaving the door clear for him to leave, and putting her back to the wall. “Our team has faced a lot together.”

He spun, arm snapping out, curling around her wrist. “But not an ice villain.”

Whether he’d just pushed her too far, or if it was the sudden move he didn’t know. Her hand had frosted over though, so he’d made his point. She yanked her hand free, here eyes flashing to a luminescent blue.

He didn’t fight her, didn’t even smile, just stood his ground. “I was Captain Cold, Ms. Snow.” In that moment he still was Captain Cold. No jacket, no gun, but his hands were twitching and his mind was sizing up everything around him. She could probably kill him, and yet he was exactly where he wanted to be.

“Well I’m not Killer Frost!” It was a snarl more than a shout, but she still glanced at the door. When no one poked their head around the corner she took a shaky breath. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, they were brown, and her fist had stopped freezing the air.

“Did Cisco come up with that? He’s slipping. You’ve already got a name.”

“Excuse me?”

“Snow. Much more suitable if you ask me. You’re not a killer. Trust me I know the type, and you’re not it.”

“You know nothing about me.” She pushed past him, busying herself with her supplies.

“I know what it’s like to have thoughts that don’t match up with my experiences. I can’t count the number of times since this thing happened to me that I’ve looked at a person and thought about how easy it would be to kill them.”  His voice was quiet. All of a sudden he was just Len again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to scramble for that cold control or go throw up. 

She glanced sideways at him, her lips pinched. “It’s not the same.”

He shrugged, “maybe not, but the alternative is moping around alone and frankly that’s a little too melodramatic even for me. Not to mention depressing.”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Did you really put all of that together from the thermostat?”

“Ah, no. I may have hacked into your security logs last night when your team was off playing with the stargate.”

Her chin went up, but her eyes stayed brown. “So are you going to tell everyone then? Or is this blackmail?”

“I--” he hadn’t really put it into words, even in his own head. The Len side of him wanted someone to talk to, someone who could tell him he wasn’t flat out crazy. Captain Cold liked the idea of knowing something that even her team didn’t. He also liked that she used ice, not many people saw the potential in it.

“I want to make a deal.”

Caitlin crossed her arms.

“We can help each other. I can teach you.”

She snorted, “no thanks, I’m not interested in the ways of the dark side.”

He couldn’t help but smile, “ah but I was only dark side in the other universe. Here I’m just a guy in over his head who could honestly use a friend.” he considered, then added, “And Barry doesn’t count. There’s the history there that…” He shook his head. He couldn’t deal with Barry yet. It was still a bit too raw.

Some kind of alarm sounded before the doctor could answer. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“Not by a long shot,” he agreed, and they headed for the cortex side by side.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Flash was stuck in a mirror.

Len didn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand he’d faced off against a crazy imortal bent on taking over the world, and the even more crazy time travelers who had been backing him. On the other hand, Mirrors? Really? That was a thing now? 

Len wasn’t sure why he was still hanging around. Then again, going back to his empty apartment and his crap job, felt like admitting defeat.

Movement pulled him back to the present. The girl, Jesse Quick, stormed out. The black kid, Wally, went after her. Wells glared after them both for a moment, then followed.

Len replayed the last few minutes in case he’d missed anything; she thought it was her fault. Barry tried calling after them, but it wasn’t like he could follow. At least they’d found a way to let him talk before Wells abandoned them.

Cisco rubbed a hand over his eyes, “Okay. Okay if the molecules are in a hyper state of flux…”

“English, if you wouldn’t mind. For those of us who don’t speak technobabble,” Len said over him.

“What he means is,” Caitlin said, stepping forward, “we might be able to get Barry out if we freeze the mirror.”

Len caught her eyes in the reflection, “Great, we’ll have him out before dinner.”

“Ah, no. We can’t just freeze the mirror.” Cisco had his hands up in tight controlled gestures. “We need to freeze the molecules inside the mirror, inside the wormhole, so they freeze even on Barry’s side of the portal.”

It was like talking to Professor Stine, the same kind of arrogance thinking that no one without a PHD could contribute. A small bubble of memories tried to cover his thoughts, but he focused on where he was, and pushed them down. 

Len let a little of the drawl into his voice, “I understood you. You just need something approaching absolute zero, and preferably with a field effect so the surrounding heat doesn’t cancel out your efforts.”

Cisco blinked then slowly nodded, “yeah, a field effect would be exactly what we need.” He snapped his fingers, “Right, You were Captain Cold in that other timeline!”

Len nodded. Not that they would need his expertise if Snow decided to play her hand. She met his eyes and shook her head slightly, biting her lip. Fine, he didn’t understand it, but he didn’t need to understand in order to respect her choice. He turned back to Cisco.

“You made the cold gun originally, but I did make several modifications, including a field effect. I can show you, if you have the original lying around somewhere.”

Cisco nodded slowly, “Yeah, I designed a cold gun right after Barry got his powers, but I never built it, the old plans will be in my workshop.” He snapped his fingers and loped out of the room without so much as a backward glance.

Len pointed after him, “He’s going to go get the plans right?”

“He’ll probably see the plans and think up twelve new improvements.” Caitlin smiled and shrugged. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t get too off track.”

That left Barry crouching in the mirror, the detective, Iris and himself. Len suddenly wished he had a weapon. He knew logically that the West family had no reason to hate him, but that didn’t stop his instincts from going on high alert. He stepped back away from the mirror, waiting to see what their next move would be. 

“Well, guess I’ll go see if I can dig up anything else on Scudder and Dillon, maybe try to find Snart before they do.” Detective West said, and headed for the door.

“I’ll,” Iris glanced at Barry, then away. “I’ll help with that.” she ran to catch up with her father.

Len let out a small breath.

“Snart, They really mean Lisa?” Len glanced over at Barry. 

“What? Oh, I guess? She wasn’t before but the timeline…”

“Right,” Len nodded, “is that why your girl is being…” He gestured at where Iris had disappeared.

Barry let his head roll back on his shoulders. His sigh sounded like static through the microphone. “No she’s… she’s not my girl.”

Something fluttered in Len’s chest. He put it down to the fact that this was the second conversation about feelings he was having in as many days. “Okay spill.”

“Huh?”

For the fastest man alive, Barry was sometimes really slow on the uptake.

“I dumped on you yesterday. It’s only fair I listen to whatever this is.”

“That’s not how friendship works Len.” he said, and he was smiling again for the first time since he’d been trapped.

“Well, if you’d rather do something else…” he opened his hands, indicating the room at large and Barry’s predicament. If it came to it, Len was confident he could find something, but he didn’t need to. Barry let out another of those static filled sighs and ran a hand through his hair.

“She’s not my girl, anymore.” He put a subtle emphasis on the last word. 

Len sat, and leaned up against the frame of the mirror. He made a little, I’m listening gesture and hoped it would be enough to get the ball rolling. He was monumentally bad at this kind of thing.

“I-- I’ve loved Iris for a long time.”

“I had picked up on that.”

“Well in this timeline we tried it. Dating. We ummm, didn’t work I guess. She said she felt like there was nothing else in her life. She would help out around here, and then we’d go home and we’d be together. Even her work, all she’d ever report on was the Flash. She said, I always made things about me, about the Flash. I asked for her support, but didn’t give her what she needed.”

He lifted his hands and let them fall in a listless shrug.

“I mean, I hope I’d be better than that but I know I can be blind to things.  I don’t… it never happened for me. I never got a chance to fall out of love with her, because I never got my chance to really be in love with her.”

Len really wished he had a drink. This was a beer conversation if there ever was one. He wasn’t sure what to say. Wasn’t sure he could give any sound advice when his own emotions were... a bit more selfish than Barry needed right now.

“That must make things awkward.”

“So awkward,” Barry agreed. “What would you do?”

“Honestly? Stop waiting for it.” Len turned enough to look at Barry. He had a little crease on his forehead. It didn’t look like he got it, so Len went on. “You found the love of your life. Congratulations. Most people don’t get anything close to that, but that doesn’t mean she has to feel the same. You keep pushing her, and you’ll just force her to keep saying no. It’s not the friend-zone. It’s not romantic. It’s frankly a bit close to stalker territory if you weren’t practically related, which gives it its own elements of creepy. If you can’t stop loving her, fine, but you don’t have to force it on her. Be shakespearian about it. Go out into the world and use that love to motivate you, make you better, the man who deserves her.”

Barry leaned back, blinking with his mouth open slightly. “Wow, you really don’t pull your punches.”

“Never have, never will.”

“Where did you even come up with that?”

“Lisa, I--” His throat closed up. He missed her to the point where it was almost physical. “I had to threaten several of her boyfriends when we were growing up. Even Scudder at one point. Most of them were assholes, but a few were just dazzled by her.”

Barry laughed softly, “I never really got to do that for Iris. We’re the same age and anyway, Joe’s way more frightening.”

“Got to admit I can’t quite picture it. The other way around maybe.”

Barry’s blush wasn’t quite the same color as his suit, but then, the lighting in that mirror world was kind of terrible. He let a thought drift past about testing the color once Barry was out of the mirror….

“Oh no,” Barry said, “That would imply that I actually had relationships. Love of my life, remember?”

“Are you telling me you’ve never had a serious relationship?”

The color spread down Barry’s neck. “How did we get on this topic again?”

Len shifted on one knee until he was facing the mirror directly. His smile might not have been very comforting, but then, he wasn’t trying that hard. “Can’t avoid the question.” He tapped a knuckle against the glass.

Flash licked his lips. Glanced up, then away. “Okay, but fair’s fair. You have to answer a question too.”

Len considered it. He could make a snide comment about the fact that he wasn’t stuck in two dimensions, but what kind of question did Barry have? He’d already spilled his guts once….

“Agreed.”

Barry licked his lips again, took a breath, “I’ve dated. There was one girl in highschool. A few others in college. I’m not a virgin or anything, I’ve experimented, but nothing really stuck.”

Len’s mind repeated the words “I’ve experimented” and immediately went off in several directions, plotting out the most likely meaning of the words in this context.

“So ummm,” Barry cleared his throat. “You and Mick….”

Len refocused, “Me and Mick, what?”

Barry shited. He crossed his arms, then immediately uncrossed them, lacing his fingers together. “You’re partners, but what does that...?”

“Mean? Entail?” 

Barry was blushing again.

Len hummed to himself, then decided to go with the truth. “We are, or I suppose we were or… might have been… friends with benefits. Mick wouldn’t use the word, but he’s basically Aro. He’s good with people, but he never goes into things looking for a relationship. Sex is on the table but he’ll never love anyone more than he loves fire. He trusted me which means a lot to people like us. I trust him to watch my back.” He paused as a thought came to him, and his voice fell “or at least, I trust the version that I used to fight beside. In this life I haven’t seen him in almost as long as Lisa.”

“Len I’m-- I’m sorry.”

Len shook his head. “Not your fault, like I said. I’ll just,” he pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’ll go see what’s keeping Cisco.”

Barry lifted a hand, and started to say something. The buzzing in his ears was thankfully too much to let Len make sense of it.


	6. Chapter 6

 

Len picked up the finished cold gun, and let the flood of memories wash over him. It had only been a few years since he’d stolen it, but looking back there was almost an anticipation. It was as if Captain Cold was always who he was meant to be, and he’d just been waiting for the world to provide the right raw materials. When he’d taken the gun from that rat of a fence in the other timeline, he’d felt it. Now he felt it again.

The weight was comfortable in his hands. The trigger that should have felt awkward, so different from any standard gun, was locked into his muscle memory as if this wasn’t the first time he’d held it. He’d directed Cisco through the last few steps so all his modifications were in place. Cisco had even whipped up a set of goggles, though those weren’t quite what he was used to. Apparently they were an old version of the Vibe goggles.

With the cold gun in his hands he was able to breath again.

“What do you think?” Len asked, strolling around Barry’s mirror so the hero could see him.  He charged up the gun and felt no urge to stop the smirk from claiming his features.

“I think I’ve never been so glad to see Captain Cold,” Barry said with a smile.

Len was about to make a crack about getting his coat back, when an alarm exploded from the ceiling.  

“Really? Now?!” Cisco loudly asked the ceiling.

“Flash!” was all the warning Len gave before pulling the trigger. The mirror was engulfed in a field of misty cold as the water in the air became snow. Barry’s image blurred. Len knew what that was, and didn’t wait for the speedster to finish phasing. With Cisco ahead, they ran for the cortex.

Caitlin was already at the computer, “It’s Top and Mirror Master again. They found Glider.”

Len’s heart stopped.

_ Lisa. _

“Where are they?”

Her hands stabbed at the keys, “Pioneer Square. Barry?”

There was a shudder of displaced air, and suddenly Barry was behind him, “I’m good. Right now we need to stop Scudder and Dillon.”

“I’m in,” Jessie was suddenly there beside him.

Len spared the briefest thought that someone must have given her a pep talk, then brushed it aside. “Not without me.” He fixed Barry with a look and continued in a quieter register, “She’s my sister.”

Barry met his eyes for a long moment, then pulled up his cowl, “Okay, let's go.”

  
  


Running with Barry was unlike anything else in the world. It wasn’t the first time  _ except for how it was  _ but it never got any less exhilarating. The world blurred by around them, as he was pressed up against Barry’s chest. He had never doubted the hero’s strength, but feeling it like this... the muscles straining under his hands, as his face was pressed into Barry’s neck… well, he’d never claimed to be a saint. 

The result was that his blood was already up when Flash dropped him behind the Sundollar on the corner of Broadway and Morrison. It took deliberate effort not to circle the small building gun out and challenge the whole world. Barry was already doing that. Instead he watched, waiting for his moment.

Pioneer Courthouse square was in many ways the heart of downtown. It was a whole block left open, and paved in red brick. The ground was at enough of an angle that the west side of the square where Len was standing, was about 25 feet higher than the east. To compensate a curving series of steps had been build up, creating an amphitheatre, open to where the solid form of the courthouse sat across the street to the east. At the tallest point of the curve the brick fell away, replaced by sheets of water that dropped in curtains down a series of concrete pillars. It was either late or early enough that the place was empty apart from their targets. All the surrounding storefronts closed up. Thank god for small favors.

Scudder stood center stage just in front of the fountain, with Dillion a few feet off. Far enough they couldn’t be taken out with one shot. They both had their backs to Len, focused on the hovering form of the Golden Glider.

Len knew her even with all the changes. He’d seen blurry pictures of the Glider before of course; when she’d outed the Flash, when she’d taken out that train, but he’d never connected it before now. 

She was hovering a good five feet off the ground, her hair golden rather than auburn, and billowing around her like she was under water. She wasn’t wearing the leather jacket or her favorite boots or anything else that had been her low key costume back when she’d used a gun. Instead she was wrapped in what might once have been a figure skater’s leotard, all white with golden ribbons wrapping around the bodice before drifting off and away, accentuating every move. She glowed and was almost see through, but it was her. Behind the little domino mask it was definitely Lisa Snart. 

Flash and Jessie Quick blurred to a stop to the east, creating the third point of the triangle. Len wants to be out there, but he’s not sure where he fits. Not with Top and Mirror Master, even in the other timeline he had trouble with them. Except he doesn’t fit with Lisa either. Flash maybe, someday, but not now with all the history no one else remembers and the emotions he hasn’t figured out yet.

“As happy as I am that you’re not robbing a bank, I can’t let you wreck downtown either.” Flash said, wearing a smile that bridged the line between confident and humorous. 

“Only warning Flash, Stay out of this it’s personal.”

“Oh so it’s personal now?” Scudder sneered, “I seem to remember you saying it was just a business arrangement.”

“After you went and fucked her?” Lisa snarled back.

“Hey,” Flash stepped forward, hands up. Off to the side Len winced. He knew what Barry was trying to do, but he also knew that when Lisa was in a mood trying to stop her only painted a target on your back.

“Stay out of it,” Lisa snarled again. She thrust a hand toward Barry and several of her ribbons surged forward. Her gold met Barry’s lightning with a burst of power.

Len was done hiding, there was no way he was going to stand by and watch now. 

Barry was blown back. He tumbled into Scudder who cursed loudly. He grabbed at Flash’s uniform. Top ran towards her partner. Jessie zipped forward putting herself between Lisa and Flash. 

Len drew the cold gun. He jumped down the first three steps, but he was still so far away.

“Out of the way copycat.” Lisa said as she dove forward. 

Jessy was fast enough to dodge. She avoided Lisa’s ribbons. Dillion wasn’t so lucky. The ribbons wrapped around Top. They weren’t substantial enough to hold her except for how touching them made her scream. Jessy looked between them, hesitating. With a cry Dillion pushed forward. She grabbed at Lisa’s forearms, still ghostly, but solid enough for Top to trigger her powers. 

Len staggered down the last few steps, thirty feet away.

Lisa screamed as Top’s powers took hold, not just making her lose her balance, making her lose her cohesion. As Len watched Lisa’s form blurred like an out of focus photograph.

He raised his gun, took aim. 

Flash blurred through his shot a second before Len pulled the trigger. Mirror master was thrown to the ground. The sound of breaking glass echoed through the square as Mirror Master shattered. Top saw it and screamed. It was enough for Lisa to pull herself free, drifting back and up, out of grabbing distance. Flash looked around at the shards that had been a man, a look of horror sweeping over what Len could see of his face.

Before Len could come up with his own reaction Scudder was back. Dozens of copies rising up out of the scattered pieces. He laughed.

“You had trouble with one of me. How many do you think you can handle?” Scudder spread his arms wide in invitation.

“As many as I have to.”

“You wish,” Top said as she thrust a hand forward. 

Flash managed to take a single step before he staggered under her power.

“Not this time,” Jessy gritted out. In a burst of lightning she and Top were gone, up and away from the square. 

A few of the mirror master copies turned to look after them, but Flash was already on him. The copies shattered almost as fast as Len could put his eyes on them. He still managed to see the trap before Barry did. Scudder had lured Flash towards the fountains. With a twist he caught one of Flash’s punches and together they tumbled through the sheet of water.

Lisa let her head fall back and laughed.

Len stepped forward, gun still in hand. He couldn’t see them either in the water or in the reflection. Cisco was talking in his ear, asking for a status update.

“Well that takes care of that. Now to tie up one last loose end.” Lisa gestured and her ribbons floated forward curling around Len. “One chance to tell me who you are, and why I shouldn’t kill you.”

Len slowly lowered the cold gun, powering it down and reholstering it. He turned so he was facing her and reached up to remove the goggles, cutting off Cisco’s voice as he did so.

“Leonard Snart. Been a long time, sis.”

For a minute that felt like an age, Lisa went still. Her hair and the ribbons rippled around and over her, but her face was a mask. Then she put on a deliberate sneer.

“I don’t have a brother, try again.”

“I left when I was 15, you were four I think. Can’t blame me from trying to get away from dear old dad, but I know that means I wasn’t there for you.”He hissed in a breath between his teeth, “In this timeline.” The memories were pressing at him. So many of them, little things that he couldn’t place. He wrapped his hand around the cold gun, letting it ground him in the moment. 

Lisa saw the gesture and floated back another foot, her ribbons clearly showing her displeasure.

He lifted his hands, apology. “Flash changed the timeline. I used to be Captain Cold, master criminal, leader of the Rogues.” 

She scoffed. “Right, and you’ve got a bridge to sell me too.” She waved an imperious hand. 

“Your name is Lisa Snart. When we were little You’d hide under the blankets when we knew Dad was downstairs. I would kneel on the edge of the bed and duck my head under. You had a set of my little ponies and we’d pretend they were trapped in the crystal caves.” He took a breath, then pushed through to the hard part, “The day I left you asked if I was going to grandpa’s. You begged to come with me. You said I could have the rest of your halloween candy if you could come.”

He had her attention now.

“I had to leave Lisa, but that didn’t mean I don’t regret it. I’ve got these memories now, of how things could have been. A different timeline where we grew up and got away from him together. Where he put a bomb in your head and I killed him for it.”

She wouldn’t look at him. Lisa crossed her arms, biting at the corner of her lip. 

“No.” she looked at him, but her eye were shuttered. “You don’t get to suddenly show up and claim to be my long lost brother. Whatever you think you remember, it didn’t happen here. Here, you are no one to me. Go back to your friends hero.” She spat out the last sentence.

He flinched.

_ You may not think you're a hero, but … you're a hero to me. I know there’s good in you. Always have to be the goddamn hero. _

Lisa was turning away.

Len stumbled forward. He reached for her. He couldn’t let that be the end of it. 

Pain. An electrifying bolt of molten lightning where her ribbons lashed out at him. He clenched his fist, clenched his teeth, and Lisa flinched. No, she should never fear him. He wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t hurt her like that.

“Lise,” He managed to croak out.

“No,” Her face had transformed into something sharp, “It’s Golden Glider to you.” She twisted her wrists, and the ribbons around him became solid enough to send him sprawling. Rising into the air, she turned and flew away over the city.

Len lay on the cold brick, panting up at the dark sky. 

He let himself breathe for a slow count of five before picking himself up and starting on the long slow walk back to the labs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a few things I'd like to mention about this chapter. First, I'm obviously taking Lisa's meta powers from the comics but I'm a bit behind there, so I'm also taking some liberties. I trust you'll all forgive me. :P  
> Second, one of the little things I love about the show is whenever they pull up a map of Central it's actually a map of Portland Oregon with different labels. I'm from Portland so I've shamelessly put all the scenes outside of Star Labs and other locations from the show in places I've been to. The park where Len and Barry were eating a few chapters back is down at waterfront park, though the fountain is actually called Salmon street springs. Pioneer Courthouse square is also a real place and if you'd like a better description then what I could write down, it can be viewed on google maps [Here](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pioneer+Courthouse+Square/@45.5187398,-122.6797333,281m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x54950a051d703e13:0xfebc36dc49ec79c7!8m2!3d45.5189217!4d-122.6793478).  
> Lastly, I have now run through my buffer of chapters, which is why you may have noticed I've been posting closer to every two weeks rather then every week. I'll try to keep up the pace, but I make no promises.


	7. Chapter 7

 

These still hours of pre-dawn were the quietest the city ever got. The streets weren’t completely empty even now: the occasional car passing him and the street people huddled in doorways. A dog barked somewhere, and a siren echoed through the alleys. There was a garbage truck clanking away down the block. The streetlights coated the world in a yellow glaze only interrupted by the occasional red and green of traffic lights.

Len stuffed his hands in his pockets and let his feet carry him where they wanted.

He didn’t know what to do.

Talking to Lisa again should have turned things around. He had been so certain he could get through to her. Now she knew who he was, but she hated him. She had every right to. He’d screwed up. He’d thought he could fix it but he was wrong. It had all gone so so wrong.

He reached for the cold gun, wrapping his fingers around it. The cold that always seeped through the metal of the casing crept up his hand, a physical barrier for the thoughts that were trying to overwhelm him. He’d had a lot of practice controlling his mind recently.

It didn’t matter if it was denial if it got him where he was going…. wherever that was.

“Snart.”

Len had the cold gun out and aimed, before his conscious mind could catch up. It wasn’t Barry. It wasn’t Jessie, or Cisco or anyone else from team Flash. It wasn’t anyone he knew from this life, not that any of them would have been out walking the streets in the early hours of the morning. No one from his old life knew him anymore.

“Who are you?”

The figure in the shadows wore a hooded coat, or possibly a cape. They took a step forward and the green over black body armor made him wonder if the arrow had decided to pay a visit. Len didn’t know much about the vigilanti, just what Sara had mentioned off-hand, but he was confident he could hold his own.

Then they actually spoke, and Len was forced to reevaluate.

“They call me Alchemy. I have an offer for you.” the man’s voice was low, with some kind of accent Len couldn’t place. Under the cape he looked reedy rather than athletic. He certainly didn’t have the arms of an archer. Which meant Len had no idea what his angle was.

“Not interested, now buzz off,” he didn’t lower the gun.

“You have memories of another timeline.”

Len rolled his eyes, “Yes, and if you’d told me that a week ago you might have caught my interest. You’re a little late to the game. Anything else before I shoot you?”

“What happened to you inside the oculus?”

Len hesitated.

Alchemy nodded, “You are not the only one with memories of the other timeline. I’ve been able to help others, but you are in a unique position. You already understand what happened to the timelines, and you’ve found an anchor all on your own.” he lifted a hand, indicating the gun.

“So why should I listen to you?” Len let the words roll out with the old drawl. He had to admit, this guy had peaked his interest. How could he know so much about Len’s situation? He hadn’t told anyone except Barry and his team, and even they didn’t know all the details.

“I gave the others their abilities, but you… Don’t you want to know how you escaped? how you ended up here? You saw all of time, don’t you want that back?”

Len hadn’t given it much thought. He’d been too focused on the results to track down the cause. His mind went back to that day in his office; the first of the new memories his mind had thrown at him. He’d died. He’d stood at the heart of the vanishing point and let the explosion take him. That was it. There was nothing after that….

“Alright, I’ll play along. What’s in it for you?”

The hood and the shadows hid most of Alchemy’s features, but Len caught the white flash of a grin. “There’s a war coming. You’ve seen the edges of it already.”

Len’s jaw went tight. “I’m no one's soldier, and I’m certainly not anyone’s pawn.” he knew better then to get mixed up in other people’s quests, that’s how he’d lost his life after all.

Alchemy was silent, his head shifting under his hood, watching. “No, not a pawn, but you will be a part of this. As a player or a sacrifice is up to you.” He took a step back. 

Len didn’t respond other than to tap his finger against the trigger. 

“Consider it.” Alchemy said, before pulling his cloak around him and letting the dark pull him in.

Len waited for a five count before he slowly reholstered the cold gun. He let out a ragged breath. As if this night couldn’t get any worse.

He ran a hand over his head, and actually took in his surroundings. He was at the north end of downtown. STAR labs was technically closer then his apartment, and he wouldn’t have to cross the river. Then again, it wasn’t like Flash had come to find him. Len didn’t doubt that Flash could win against Mirror Master, but the whole procedure felt like a chore at the moment. He headed east, to catch the lightrail. The sun had just started to rise as he fell into bed.

 

Len gasped awake clawing at the sheets, with blue light flooding the back of his eyelids. He knew he’d been dreaming, but it was all blue. The details were gone. His hands shook as he pressed them to his eyes. For several long minutes he sat there and just breathed. 

He thought this mess was done. Was he just stuck like this? Doomed to never have a good nights sleep ever again?

He looked at the clock. It was too late to bother heading into work. Len tried to remember if he’d called out for… what day was it? His inner clock was all screwed up and it was only adding to the headache building behind his eyes.

Someone knocked on his door.

Len managed to lever himself up and pull on a shirt over his sweatpants before whoever it was tried again. Len really hoped it wasn’t Flash. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that yet. The knock was dull, like they were using the flat of their hand.

Len took a breath and opened the door, ready to tell off whoever was on the other side.

The face that looked back at him over a pair of worn overalls belonged to someone he hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Mick.”

Mick glanced down to his nametag then back to Len with a little crease between his eyes. “Yeah. Neighbors complained about a gas leak. Got to check all the apartments. He held up a plastic box. “Can I come in?”

Len took a step back, stunned. Mick eyed him for another few seconds, then lifted his chin in a gesture so familiar Len had to focus not to go into flashbacks. Mick headed for the kitchen. Len closed the door and followed.

How? Was this his Mick, come to check on him? The Mick from the waverider? Had the Legends realized he was alive? Or was this a copy, like himself without the memories, going about a regular life? Len wasn’t sure what the Time Masters had done to Mick when he was Chronos. Maybe he did have memories and was just going through the motions like Len had those first few days.

Mick was crouched down, looking at some kind of remote control maybe? It had a short hose Mick was pointing at the base of the stove.

How to test him? The Flash was still a hero in this timeline, so that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t ask about Heatwave because it was too easily misunderstood. Mick might play it off. Too early in the timeline too. What if he’d become Heatwave here but still wasn’t his Mick because he never traveled with them.

“Do you remember the Waverider?” Len tried to keep his tone casual. Then Mick stiffened and his heart leapt into his throat.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mick lied. He wouldn’t have been convincing even if Len hadn’t known him. His shoulders were hunched, and he wasn’t crouching anymore but properly kneeling, one leg up and ready to move.

“Do you remember me?” Len’s voice broke. He had to know, even if Mick walked out the door. It would probably shatter him, if Mick walked away like Lisa had, but if he didn’t. If he stayed.

Mick stood, slammed his remote into its case and turned on him. He was practically asking for a fight. Using his broad frame to fill the space and clenching every muscle from his fists to his jaw.

“Should I?”

Contrary to every physical sign, Len relaxed. An angry Mick he could deal with. He’d been dealing with his friend’s temper for half a lifetime. Even if this Mick didn’t know about the Waverider he still had a hold on him.

“Leonard Snart. We met in juvi, pulled that job when we got out. We were sixteen maybe….”

Mick squinted, then his stance relaxed. “Oh, yeah I remember.” He looked Len over again, this time more considering than cautious. “Sixteen and stupid.”

Len smiled, shrugged in a ‘what can you expect’ way. 

Something on Micks device beeped and he went to pick it up again. “I’ve got to check this.”

Len hummed in agreement. That was when he realized Mick was going to finish his job and wish Len luck, and move on. Just like he did last time. Just some crazy coincidence that you shrug off at the end of the day. He’d started to unscrew the base of the stove; wiggled it open enough to shove the little hose inside and looked at the remote again. Completely ignoring Len.

His heart was racing but Len tried to play it cool. “Sorry to jump on you like that. Didn’t expect you of all people at my door. Looks like you’re doing alright for yourself though.”

Mick just grunted, but it was an affirming grunt. There was no low edge to it warning that Len should stop talking. From Mick it was enough to move forward with.

Len ran a finger along the edge of the counter and considered the best plan of attack. Offering to buy him a drink sometime would probably be the most secure way to win over this Mick’s trust, but it’d be slow. Things tended to be all or nothing with Mick and Len currently had a strike against him, both for the botched job and the earlier slip of the tongue. He could come out and ask. Mick would probably appreciate the straightforward approach. Except it would mean admitting to the memories and that was a weakness Len wasn’t sure he wanted to show. As much as he felt he knows Mick he didn’t, not really. At least, not this version of the man.

_ Cuffed to the railing and Mick taking off the helmet. Scrambling through the halls of the League of assassins. Following the sound of fighting with his shattered wrist pressed to his chest and hoping to God he’s not too late. _

Len caught his breath, trying not to go under, not now. Where’s the gun? He needed the cold gun. Needed something solid to prove he’s real. He managed to stumble around the counter to where he tossed the gun and his coat the night before. He doesn’t actually manage to sit. Stumbles instead, pulling the weapon close and pressing his back against the side of the couch. 

_ Stairing Mick down through the glass of the cell.  _

Mick’s staring now too. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen wearing a blank non-expression. 

_ Mick grunting when Len offered the heat gun for the second time after they’d beaten each other to pulp; an apology and a thank you in one low syllable. _

“Hey, easy, you’re gonna be okay. Just breath. In and out.” Mick had moved which meant Len had lost a few seconds. He was crouched down elbows on his knees just outside of grabbing distance. He’d found a spot that didn’t block Len’s sightlines and didn’t block the front door or the door to the bedroom.

Len squeezed the barrel of the cold gun, keeping away from the trigger. Now was not the time for an accident. Mick was still gesturing for him to breath so he did, slowly, in and out.

Once he had the rhythm of it, Mick spoke. “Well that sucks. I hate panic attacks. Do you know what caused it? Shit, it wasn’t me was it? I can go. I mean you’re not supposed to leave people alone but if you’d rather I...” he waved at the door.

Len shook his head. “No. Not you. Or, not this you, not now you.” He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly trying to force his thoughts back into place. When he opened his eyes Mick was giving him his “you’re about to do something crazy and I know I’m not going to like it” look.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay”

“Few weeks back I--” he stopped, tried to piece together words that would make sense. To hell with it, Mick wasn’t going to think any less of him now. “There was another me. A version who lived a whole different life. The timeline changed and something kicked his memories into my head. Now I get these flashes. He was a time traveler, and a supervillain. You were his partner. Which means I must have done something to chase you off in this version and that sucks because you‘re the closest friend I--” Len shut his mouth on the end of that sentence. He can’t put that on Mick. Not here, even if it’s still true. He hasn’t had a real close friend in years.

“Sorry, those are his words.”

Mick shrugged “S’not why I left.”

Len looked up, met his eyes.

Mick settled into a more comfortable position, leaning against the armchair. “After the fire that killed everyone I was picked up by a bunch of time travelers. This guy who said he was my older self, gave me a lecture about not turning into him. I brushed it off. Wasn’t sure I believed him. Except the way things kept going, first Juvie then you and that botched job. We barely got away that night, you remember? It kept going through my head, what that guy said. And all the shrinks and social workers kept warning me that once you had a record that was it. Like it was a death sentence. A man could get away with a sealed Juvie record, but if he’s done time, he’s marked. Scared me straight I guess.”

Len felt himself relaxing as Mick talked. He let his head roll back against the cushions as Mick finished.

“You and me both apparently. I got out after that too.”

“What’re you doin’ now then?”

“Architect.”

“Huh, and here I’m just a handyman.”

Len glanced back to the kitchen, “Do you need to...?”

“Na, you’re good, and this was the last unit on my list.”

Len pulled in courage with a slow breath. “Then, if you’re free, there are some things I need to talk out. Get my head on straight.”

Mick hummed, and started hefting himself to his feet. Len’s heart fell.  _ He’d asked for too much too fast. He’d walk away like Lisa had…. _

Mick offered his hand, and pulled Len to his feet. “You’re buying the beer.”

Len smiled.  _ Or maybe not. _ “Yeah, sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very heartfelt Thank You to SwiftyTheWriter for helping me hammer out the rest of the plot. You are amazing.


	8. Chapter 8

  
  


Mick emptied his bottle and leaned back on his side of the booth. “Well, huh.”

Len looked down at his own bottle and thumbed at the label while he let Mick think.

They’d been sitting in a back corner of Saints and Sinners while Len laid out the events of the past few weeks. When they’d gotten there it’d been the later half of the afternoon, now the evening crowd was comfortably settled in.  

“So, you’ve got two sets of memories, one of em was a supervillain and a time traveler, but that’s not this you. You’ve got a sister who  _ is _ a supervillain here. You’re friends with the Flash…. And you have no idea how any of it happened?”

“Well, I’ve been assuming it’s because I blew up the oculus….”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“Well, no.”

“Okay... if you don’t care.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You do you, but if it was me. I wouldn’t want anyone messing with me like that.” He watched Len’s face and apparently decided more of an explanation was needed. “I’ve never had a person screw with me like that but my own head has done its fair share. Losing time,  Forgetting where I was or what I was doing. It sucks. Hell there was that time that your friends grabbed me and took me to that lady's house. I was there for close to two weeks, when I got back everyone thought I’d run away… for two months. If something like that happened to me, again, I wouldn’t take it sitting down, is all I’m saying.”

Len nodded, “I see your point. I think this could have just happened on its own, but it’d be long odds. So if someone is behind it, why do they want me back in play.”

“You tell me. You’re the one with the supervillain in your head.”

Len considered it. He wasn’t the biggest fish in the pond when it came to supervillainy, but it was a close race. He wasn’t going to sit back and do as he was told, that had already been proven. Giving him this set of memories ensured some kind of change in the timeline, even if his mysterious benefactor didn’t do anything else. And speaking of mysterious….

“That guy, Alchemy, said I was already at the edges of it. That there was a war coming.”

Mick nodded once. “Sounds like someone you wanna talk to.” 

“I’m not sure I trust him, not sure I believe him.”

“Why not? Hell of a story to go with if he was gonna lie.”

Len rolled his empty bottle between his hands and let his mind work through the problem out loud. “He could mean Savage. He was still in play when I kicked it. No sign yet if anyone managed to off him. And the time masters were gearing up for something big. Trying to put up someone like Savage as a puppet dictator is too big a risk otherwise.”

Mick grunted for him to go on.

“If there is something coming… He said I’d seen the edges of it…”

Len leaned forward, illustrating his points with taps on the table. “Every time the legends went to the future it was bad. Either civilization had broken down or corporations had taken over and set up their own government, or it was the middle of a war zone. There has to be something that pushes us down that road.”

“Humans can fuck up without any kind of push,” Mick pointed out.

”Not like this. It was bad, disaster level bad. No one saw it coming…. but Alchemy knows.”

“You gonna talk to him then?”

Len leaned back again, the threads of a plan starting to come together. “Yes, but I’ll need backup.” He looked up, met Mick’s eyes.

“Who, me?”

Len shrugged, “You were a supervillain too, in that other world. You had a heat gun. I remember the basic schematic, and I’m sure I could get Cisco to put one together for you.”

Mick swallowed the last of his drink, and looked out across the bar. It was less colorful than the last time Len remembered drinking here. In this timeline it was still just a bar for thieves and crooks rather than costumed criminals. 

Mick sighed and shook his head. “Thanks for the offer but that’s not me. I’ve worked hard to get to where I’m at.”

Len admitted the disappointment in the privacy of his own mind. Out loud he said, “That’s cool. I’ll ask the Flash. Wanna come with?”

Mick’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “Isn’t that against the rules or something?” 

That made Len give off a bark of a laugh as he shook his head. “Next time maybe. Wouldn’t wanna surprise him if I’m going in asking for favors.”

Len got out his wallet to settle the tab, then hesitated, fiddling with it.

“Not losing your nerve now are you?”

“What? No, it’s just…” He lifted a hand to gesture then let it drop, the action falling short. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but I really don’t want to walk out of here and never see you again.”

Mick’s eyebrows arched up, “And taking it the wrong way would be….”

“I don’t want to date you. There’s a thing that I remember and well…”

“Didn’t end well?”

“There were expectations that didn’t really work. We were both young though so that contributed to the stupidity.” Len was pointedly looking out over the room rather than tempt fate by meeting Mick’s eyes.

“So, you don’t want to date me but…”

“Can I have your number.” It came out in the most awkwardly stilted tone Len had ever used. When Mick let out a laugh, Len rolled his eyes and flipped him off, but he was reaching for his phone so Len wasn’t going to complain. 

 

<><><><><>

 

Len had taken two steps out of the elevator when lightning flashed down the corridor and circled him. His hand went to the cold gun strapped to his thigh. He braced his feet shoulder length apart, bent his knees and waited the second or two before Barry came to a stop in front of him.

“You’re alright!”

Len shrugged, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well you never came back. Cisco said you were probably fine because you’d put up a fight if anyone tried anything and there was no sign of anything like that. I was going to go find you but I don’t know where you live or work, I don’t even have a phone number or anything and well, everyone said it’d be creepy if I flashed around the city checking every house and apartment building so….” Barry’s words started out nearly too fast to understand, but he trailed off towards the end.

“They’re right, that would be creepy.” Barry slumped a bit. “But thanks for your concern,” Len went on. Social expectations aside, Barry’s enthusiasm was kind of cute. And the whole issue could have easily been avoided. He pulled out his cell, unlocked it and handed it over. Barry’s face lit up as he entered his number and sent a text to himself, saving the new contact in his own phone.

“So, how’d your fight end?” Len asked as they started for the cortex.

“Well, I managed to get out of those mirrors. He’s got a whole world in there. It was like a funhouse, or like I always thought a funhouse would be before I actually went to one and was super disappointed as a kid.”

“He got away then?”

“Yeah, Jessie got Top though, she’s headed back to Iron heights.” Barry paused, glancing at Len sideways, “Lisa?”

“She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

The hero turned to face him fully. “I’m so sorry, if there’s anything I can do…”

Len waved him off, “She’s her own person. Either I’ll win her back or I won't.”

Barry bounced on his heels, his expression sceptical, “That’s a very reasonable answer.”

“I may have had a chat with Mick on the subject.”

“You found him? That’s great!”

Len nodded, “It actually helped me get some things straight in my head.” They turned the corner into the cortex and Len directed his next question to the whole room. “Any of you heard of someone called Alchemy?”

The team glanced at each other. Cisco clenched his jaw. Caitlin’s eyebrows came together in concern. Wally bit his lip. 

Barry thought for a moment then shrugged. “ Clariss had the word written in his cell, but with everything going on, I haven’t looked into it.” 

Cisco leaned back in his chair, “Ah, no, we researched him after Echo remember?”

Barry shook his head.

“Like a month and a half ago? Right after the fist of those husk things?” Wally tried.

Barry shrugged again, “Must have been before I reset things.”

“Okay, it’s like this: After the first husk dropped this girl shows up with sonic powers. Echo. Piper agreed to help stop her. Caught her and everything was looking good. Except she was terrified of a guy named Alchemy, wouldn’t tell us anything about him, or how he gave her powers. She was killed in police custody. No evidence, no security footage, nothing.”

“Like with Rival.” 

Cisco nodded.

“Well, last night, he introduced himself to me. Said he could help with my memory issues, since I’ve covered the power thing without his help. He said he gave others powers and he mentioned the oculus.” Len stepped in before they could start arguing about the differences in who remembered what.

“That wasn’t in the other timeline.” Barry still wasn’t in costume, but his stance had changed. It was the hero standing there now.

“I thought not,” Len agreed, “and that being the case, I want to find out what he knows.”

“How though?” Wally asked, “It’s not like we can look up Alchemy in the phonebook.”

Len smiled, “I’ve got a few ideas on that front.”

Barry settled back on his heels with one hand on his hip. “I’m not going to like these ideas am I?”

“Probably not.”

Barry’s grin matched his own as they settled in to work out the plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have depression, and when it kicks in writing is not something I can do. That said, I am still working on thins story. I do plan to finish it and all that.


	9. Chapter 9

Len took his time with the locks on the nightclub. The buzz of an upcoming heist was already thrumming through him and he was going to savor it while he could. 

The building was on the edge of the bad part of town. Some kind of half converted warehouse that managed to draw in kids who wanted to walk on the wild side without getting dirty.  The inside was plywood and concrete, spray panted to look like more then it was. The bottles behind the bar were props if he was any judge, the real liquor tucked under lock and key. The sound system on the small stage was the only thing of any value, a cobbled together affair that somehow spoke of an intentional design.

Exactly what he'd hoped to find. It had been a while since he'd seen Pipers work, but it wasn't something he was going to forget.

Len headed for the back. It only took a moment to locate the stairs to a small apartment tucked into the rafters. The door at the top of the landing had better locks then the building below. They would have done a better job if the walls weren't laughably slapped together. His inner architect was disgusted.

Len knocked, and the sounds from within stopped. 

"Hartley? My name's Leonard. I have a proposition for you, Can we talk?"

There was another moment of silence, then footsteps. Not running thank goodness. Len had spent half the afternoon finding this bolt hole, chasing the kid through alleys wasn't going to make a good first impression.

"You with the cops?"

"No, free agent, like yourself."

"Lawyer?"

"Kid, I wouldn't tell you if I was. but since you're so concerned." He rifled through his wallet, and pulled out a business card, slipping it under the door. There was another minute of silence and creaking floorboards. Eventually locks started clicking and Hartley Rathaway appeared in the chain length gap. He looked Len up and down.

"If you're looking for the guy who owns the building, I'm not him."

"Not that I'd shed a tear if this fire hazard got torn down, but no. Like I said, I have a proposition for you Piper." The door tried to slam shut at the use pf Piper's moniker, but Len was ready, and had his foot wedged in the small gap. "I'm not here to turn you in, kid. I'm looking for help with a heist. You know Lisa Snart? leader of the Rogues? She's my sister."

The pressure on the door eased up a fraction. "you're with the Rogues?"

"Well, I'm certainly not with anyone else." Len took a breath and tried to sound trustworthy. The drawl faded and the boardroom/cocktail party smile he'd perfected over the years came as easily as picking the locks had. "Just hear me out. I'll answer all your questions, and if you still want me to leave, I will."

Len counted slowly to 35 before Hartley looked through the crack in the door again. "You try anything I will blast you."

"Understood, now, should I explain through the door, Or may I come in?"

Hartley took his time unlatching the chain. When he let the door swing inward, the kid had one hand raised, not attacking, but clearly showing the sonic glove he was wearing.

Len crossed the threshold, with a nod. "Thank you."

The small space was built on the same low standards as the rest of the building, cheap materials and a simple design with no thought or artistry behind it. Hartley had divided the space with a curtain tacked to the slanted ceiling, partially blocking off a corner with a mattress on the floor and an IKEA dresser. The rest of the space was taken up by an armchair, a mini-fridge with a coffeepot balanced on top of it, and a worktable in pride of place under the window.

Where the rest of the space looked like it had been thrown together as necessary, the table was pristine. Tools were lined up within easy reach, materials organized by size and purpose. The other sonic gauntlet was displayed on what could have been a manikin hand. 

"So if you're a Rogue, why the fake business card?" Hartley asked, leaning back against the desk.

"It's not fake, though that part of the story might be a bit hard to believe."

"My former mentor was a speedster from the future who came back in time to build and then blow up a particle accelerator, in order to give people super powers with dark matter.  Try me."

"Fair enough. In an alternate timeline I was a supervillian called Captain Cold. I went time traveling. There were a bunch of wannabe time lords who were trying to control me and my crew, so I blew them up. Unfortunately that involved me getting blown up as well. Luckily instead of dieing, my brain or soul or memories got shuffled into this timeline where I'm a perfectly normal office drone... or was until about a month ago." Len paused to make sure Hartley wasn't going to try to kick him out.

Hartley took a minute to process the implications but when he spoke again it was clear he was digging straight to the heart of the matter. "So why come to me?"

"Several reasons. One, I'm planning a heist, and I know you're capable. Two, you're actually still in the game, unlike my partner from the other timeline. Three, you're not a member of the Rogues from what I can tell."

Hartley shook his head, "you said..."

"I'm not with anyone else." Len pursed his lips, "In the other timeline, I was leader of the Rogues, and Lisa  _is_  my sister, but in this timeline I abandoned her as a kid. She's not speaking to me."

Hartley nodded slowly again. "You're right, I'm not with the Rogues."

"Would you like to be?"

"From what you just said you couldn't introduce me if you wanted to," Piper crossed his arms.

Len lifted a hand in a so-so gesture. "I have access to them. I know Lisa, even if she doesn't think I do. And I know a lot of the others. I can find them easy enough, same way I found you. It just wouldn't help. I know the Flash too come to that." Len waited, watching to see if that hook would work better than the previous.

Hartley snorted, "Those idiots aren't even trying to hide."

"It's true that Flash is remarkably bad at hiding his identity. You'd think more people would have put it together." 

Hartley eyed him. "How'd you get mixed up with the hero?"

"Initially? In the other timeline, we went head to head. Eventually we made a deal. We exchanged favors. I'm not part of his team if that's what you're thinking, but he's not going to turn me in either. That's another reason I came to you actually. Ramon mentioned you work together on occasion."

Hartley shrugged. "Not many people will hire me for anything technical anymore. I think they're trying to lure me to the side of the angels like I'm some feral cat."

Len laughed, "You too? Did Flash give you the 'I know there's good in you' speech?"

Hartley's brows came together, "No..." 

Len shrugged, waving it off.  "So my heist, you interested?"

"Let's say I'm still listening. You claim you're from another timeline, but I haven't seen proof yet. Plus--" Hartley paused, squinting his eyes at Len. "what is this really about?"

Len let his smile spread unhindered across his face. "Clever as always. I do have an ulterior motive. You see, there's a man named Alchemy, He's killing people, that's why the Flash is interested anyway. I'm helping out in that regard, but I'm also interested in him for my own reasons. I'm hoping this heist will draw him out."

"Why? What are we stealing?"

Len did an inner happy dance. Piper had said we, that meant he was in, even if he didn't want to admit it yet.

"Money."

Piper looked unimpressed.

"From the mob."

Hartley's face locked up. He pushed himself off the desk and pointed to the door. "Get out. I'm not stupid enough to stand beside someone who's trying to start a mob war."

Len held up a hand, trying to placate him. "You said you'd hear me out."

This was the part of the plan Barry hadn't liked too. Robbing a bank was one thing. Especially when the plan called for Flash to show up and try to stop him. Barry had been totally on board with that part. Good to know Len wasn't the only one who enjoyed their little games. Robbing a mob bank upped the stakes. Robbing a mob bank with the intention of painting a target on his back.... 

It had taken a half hour to get Barry to calm down, which Len thought was a bit much given he processed everything at speedster rates. 

Len hoped Piper would be easier to convince, or at least faster.

"In the other timeline, I took out the Italians, well, the head of the family and his two lieutenants anyway." Len explained. "It caused a bit of a turf war between the irish and the mexicans, and let me set up the Rogues in the middle of it. Now I don't know how Lisa went about establishing herself, but from the research I've done, the Italians are still a powerful player."

"And you need to knock them down a few pegs for some reason?"

Len considered, "Well, I don't have to. I'd never work for any of the families, but them especially. My father was a royal bastard, and he did jobs for them on the side, so I certainly don't mind hitting them ware it hurts as often as possible, but no. The real reason is that I need to seem desperate."

"Good way to end up dead."

"Yes, I'm hoping Alchemy thinks the same. He offered me help once before. I need to draw him out again, like I said." Len held up a hand, "Don't worry, I don't plan on dragging you down with me. As soon as Flash shows up I'll distract him and let you get away with the loot. You can go to Star labs or if you prefer, I can tell you where you can find Lisa. She'll take my share of the payoff to keep you safe for a while. That should give you enough time to charm her into keeping you."

Hartley narrowed his eyes. "Just like that. As if no one's going to notice a second person."

"You don't have to go as Piper. A generic mask and people will assume you're a hired thug as long as you don't overdo the sonics. I need your hacking skills not your weaponry. Plus, I plan to make a show of it."

Hartley slumped back. Len could tell he was just an inch away from caving. "What about that girl Flash?"

"Her name is Jessie Quick, and I have it on the best authority that she went back to her own universe this morning." Len said smugly. He'd enjoyed watching how the portal of theirs worked.

"Great so alternate universes are a thing too?"

"Yeah, it's a real science fiction convention around here these days."

Hartley bit his lip, still hesitating.

"Do you want to know the take? It's enough to get you out of this fire trap, that's for sure. Hook up with the Rogues and you'll be able to set up a proper workshop. If this world's anything like my old one, then the Trickster is the closest thing the Rogues have to a mechanic other then you. And trust me, his gizmos go boom even when you don't want them to. They'll be ecstatic to have someone with your skills. Just don't try anything with my sister."

"Not my type." Hartley said, offhand. He looked at the door, at his glove, then glanced at Len. "If your plan is just go in guns blazing, you can forget it."

"Hardley, but I'm not going to spill unless you're in."

He ran his ungloved hand over his face, "yeah, I'm in."

 

<><><><><>

 

"Thirteen minutes, twenty seconds." Len said as the driver of the armored car got into his vehicle and turned over the engine.  

Hartley acknowledged the comment, by tapping the mic on his jacket. He was already inside, pretending to fill out paperwork. Len hadn't told Barry the details, but he had no doubt that he'd be along on schedule. 

Len entered the bank like a storm, freezing the doors in place and then shattering them. The screams  of the tellers and  the afternoon crowd was overlaid by the ringing of the alarm. He had his goggles down, a new blue parka, his gun at the ready and a smile so sharp no one would be able to mistake the situation for anything but what it was. Another short burst of cold and the alarm cut off, the crowd going silent in shock.

"That's better. Now that I have your attention. I think we all know why we're here. Employees line up against the back wall. As for the rest of you, I know it's cold to kick you out, but you wouldn't want to overstay your welcome. And no heroes now, wouldn't want our dear Flash to feel upstaged. Move!" 

Everyone jerked into motion. Len caught sight of Piper slipping into the back in the confusion. The civilians didn't seem to want to get too close to him as they headed for the space that was no longer a door. Len was confident he'd do his part. Len would keep things clear for him in the meantime.

"That all of you? Good." Len glanced behind the desks to be sure no one was hiding, then froze the door to the offices. It would keep anyone from escaping and give Piper a bit of extra cover. Two for one. 

Nine minutes 41 seconds. 

Of the five people up against the wall, three were tellers, one was some kind of paper pusher and then there was the branch manager. Len mentally pulled up his dossier. Late forties, no wife, and a preference for girls that owed something to the italians. College and licences, paid for by the same. His dad had been a made man, until he'd taken a bullet. The family had looked after him, and noticed his talents. He was a loyal dog, but mostly because he couldn't hope for anything better.

"The vault." Len gestured with his gun. 

"Do you know--" the man's voice wavered and Len spoke over him.

"Yes I know who's paying you. When this is all over you can tell the family Captain Cold took their Ice. If I don't decide to ice you that is." He swallowed, and headed for the vault with the safety deposit boxes, hands raised. Len spent ten seconds freezing a wall of ice around the other hostages. 

Eight minutes nine seconds.

The vault was open for business hours, just needed a code for appearances sake. Len stepped up behind the manager once the door was open. A quick strike with the but of his gun and the man would be out for a few hours. He'd have a headache, but no permanent damage. 

Seven minutes 32 seconds.

The bank had forty deposit boxes and two larger cases for internal use. at least half, and probably close to three fourths of those boxes were rented to family men. Len adjusted the settings on the cold gun and fired a wide range blast at short range. Enough to freeze the box doors without doing much damage to whatever was inside. If he'd had more time, or cared about being quiet he'd have done more research on which box contained what. As it was he just started smashing.

Cash, jewelry, bonds, all interesting but not a painful loss. Len let the gold fill his pockets, and tossed the rest onto the floor. A gift for the cops who were probably looking for an excuse to case this place. Maybe Barry would even be the one to do the write up.

Five minutes.

There, a locked cigar case with engraved initials went into the inner pocket of his parka. Three thumb drives, and a two roles of film into a waterproof bag. More cash. some kind of ledger. Papers, a will maybe. A small cat statue. Passports. More cash. Diamonds, those were worth keeping.

One minute 23 seconds.

His goggles flashed with a warning about the cops. Len checked his take was secure. He couldn't afford for trinkets to go spilling out of his pockets during a fight.

40 seconds.

Len tuned towards the vault door, planted his feet and fired.

Flash slammed into the wall of super-chilled air and froze in place.

"Nice of you to stop by Flash. You're right on time."

Barry struggled to turn towards him, teeth chattering as he tried to speak, "C-c-c-cold."

Len made a slight adjustment to his own protections, "Word to the wise. If there's only one way in, they'll know exactly where you're coming from." He dodged around Barry, stepped over the manager's slumped form, and raced for the door.

Here's where the plan went off the rails. He couldn't know how long it'll take for Barry to recover, thirty seconds? Two minutes? Enough time to get to his motorcycle? They've got to put on a show, but not too much. No civilians in danger of course, but enough to keep everyone's attention. Piper's still inside. The extra piece Barry doesn't know about. The real money's all digitized nowadays. 

Len can't be the one to win here if they're going to bait this trap, but he can't get locked up either.

He gets to his bike and Flash has only just stumbled to the doors. "To slow Scarlet," and he's tearing down the road. The sirens have finally gotten a clue. That's the problem with mob security and not trusting the official authorities, slower response time. They're still heading towards the bank as he guns it in the opposite direction.

Red.

Barry, back up to speed, pacing him. A look, and a smile. They're in this together. No script, but they both know the score.

If his heart wasn't already racing, he'd be over the moon. God he loved this. He'd missed it. 

Len grinned back and twisted the bike into a tight turn. Flash lost half a block in the wrong direction, then he was back circling around. He blurred ahead, getting civilians out of a crosswalk. Len took another corner at speed. He cut in front of the lightrail. Jumped the tracks for twenty feet, then back onto the blacktop.

Barry paced him. Zigging back and forth ahead, blocking Len's sight with his lightning trail. Len countered with a blast of ice. Cars skidded, screams, the crunch of metal. For a handful of seconds Barry was gone, making sure everyone survived. Len took the chance to turn towards the river. The boardwalk wouldn't be empty at this time of day but it'd at least be less crowded than downtown. 

Flash was beside him again, reaching for him.

No way to avoid it. Instead he sideswiped Flash. Barry went tumbling. Something in the bike caught. Len cursed. He couldn't get control. The sideswipe turned into a skid, Len kicking his leg free rather then get trapped.

Flash was over him, "Time to put you on ice."

Len could admit it, he was more than a little in love with Barry in that moment. 

He pulled the trigger on the cold gun, not bothering to aim. Flash stumbled back, one foot frozen to the ground.

"Don't worry scarlet, I won't hold it against you for getting cold feet."

Len heard the echo of his laugh and Barry started vibrating. Interesting, no thermal threading. That must have been why he took a few extra seconds at the bank.

Flash was suddenly free, zipping forward. Len didn't have time to think. He fired blast after blast, aiming at a target he couldn't hope to hit. Flash was backing him toward the boardwalk, The railing over the river hit his back.

Len switched to the wide setting, trying to catch him with the same trick as earlier, but Flash zipped around to come from the other side.

Len knew Barry was holding back, but even so the punch hurt like hell.

His leg gave out and he twisted, his final shot going wide. Something shattered. It wasn't him, Len was fairly sure of that. He ducked, rolled. He was falling. His shoulder hit a hard surface. Cold.

The ice under him was wet and he slid a good thirty feet before mostly coming to a stop.

He was on the river. A section of railing was gone, and a cone of water had frozen in place. Len shifted, trying to see the shore. Where was Flash? The ice creaked under him, and he froze.

"Cold!" 

Len risked turning his head. Flash was lowering himself onto the ice with slow deliberation. He managed to stay standing but it was clear that each step was a battle to stay balanced. 

Under them, the ice groaned.

Oh.

Oh that was....

This was not going to be pleasant.

Flash was only ten feet away now. 

Len met his eyes. "Break the ice," he whispered.

"What?" 

Len raised the cold gun, and Flash got with the program. 

There was a moment when Len would have sworn his perceptions were as fast as Barry's. One icy blast fired at the sky. A bolt of lightning. Ice cracking under him. Cold foul tasting water. His parka threatening to pull him under. Barry's face behind the mask, eyes wide with a mixture of trust and fear.

Len really hoped it wasn't misplaced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this was a tricky chapter.   
> I was originally fuzzy on what was going to happen in this chapter. "Get Alchemy's attention" is basically all I had in my original outline. Then I wrote one paragraph and all of a sudden Len was trying to rob the gold reserve. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Leonard Snart. 
> 
> Both me and Barry said no to that plan (even if it would make Lisa happy). Eventually the current plan came together, but it was a lot of me going "Oh my god Len, Why?" and then writing three paragraphs that explained the twisted logic. 
> 
> That was all in another section where Len talked out the basics of the plan with Barry and team Flash. I ended up scrapping it because with it there was no suspense when talking to Piper. 
> 
> And Piper! I love him. He's wonderful. There needs to be more of him. I feel he walks the same line Len does with the not a hero, not a villain thing. It was fun to explore where he was in this universe.
> 
> Then because it's all from Len's POV it doesn't seem like Piper is doing much in the second half. *sigh* I considered making this two shorter chapters at one point, but there wasn't really much point. I do like the second half, it's been a while since I got a chance to write a good action scene. I wrote most of it in one sitting too. Go Me!


	10. Chapter 10

 

Len tucked the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Going into the water may have let him get away, but it wasn't something he planned on doing again any time soon. Finding a place to get out of the water and locating one of the few remaining pay phones because his cell was ruined had taken about all he had left.

The door opened and Mick came in with a pair of plastic bags in hand. Mick gave him a look, rolled his eyes, and headed for the kitchen.

When his brain had been waterlogged and frozen, Mick's number was the only one he could remember. He'd have to do something nice for Mick once he was back on his feet. The man was putting up with a lot considering this version didn't actually know Len.

He missed his Mick. Not that this version wasn't great, but still....

"Hey, Lenny, you still with me?" 

Len blinked. His mind had drifted. Mick knelt in front of the couch. He had a cup of water and the plastic bags, and a generally unimpressed look.

Len hummed.

"Okay, I've got antibiotics because that water is foul. Should help bring your fever down too."

"I don't have a fever." Len protested. He was just cold. The water had been icy after all, totally reasonable.

"Prove it." Mick held up a thermometer.

Len sighed, but took it and stuck it under his tongue. "Did you--" He started to say but Mick held up a hand. Len stopped trying to talk and waited until Mick took the thermometer back. "Did you remember the phone?"

Mick tossed him a box. Len sat up, adjusted the blanket around him and set to work recreating his phone from the backups.  Halfway through the process Mick gave him a handful of pills, and a cup of microwave soup, taking his phone in the process.

"You got a girlfriend?" Mick grunted.

Len looked up from his soup, "no."

"Then why do you have 21, oh 22 now, texts from someone named Scarlet?"

"That's the Flash, just call him, it'll be faster."

Mick glanced at him eyes wide, "Seriously?"

"Sure, he won't mind, put it on speaker."

Mick shrugged and hit a few buttons.

"Len?" Barry's voice was a bit breathless through the static.

"Still alive." Len reported.

Mick snorted, "Barely."

There was a pause from Barry's end, "Is that Mick? Am I on speaker?"

"Yes on both counts." Len waved a hand even though Barry wouldn't see it. "Mick, meet Flash. No I haven't told him your real name."

"Did I know before?" Mick asked.

Len shrugged, "once we joined the Legends there was no point hiding it. basically every other member of the crew knew. Though you might have figured it out before then." He turned to the phone, "You need to pay more attention to your secret identity Scarlet. If you're not careful anyone might figure it out."

"Oh yeah, what about you? Mild mannered architect by day, super-thief by night? Think anyone from the bank can ID you?"

"Huh, I didn't consider that." Len mused. 

"Wait, you robbed a bank?" Mick asked slightly incredulous.

"The mob bank on 7th. Want to see the score?" Len purred.

"Len," Barry sounded disproving. 

"You managed to drag cash through the river?" Mick wasn't disapproving, just confused.

"Grab my parka." Len shifted, stretched, and something in his chest caught. For a minute he couldn't breath, doubled over and coughing.

"Len!" Barry's voice rose in pitch, "Are you okay?"

He managed to get a full breath, and counted as he let it out. "Fine, Scarlet."

"You don't sound fine."

"He's right." Mick broke in. "Take your antibiotics." He bent and scooped up the phone. "Don't worry Flash, I'll make sure he doesn't kick it. You know where his apartment is?"

"You are not telling him where I live." Len grumbled, "I'll never hear the end of it."

"Yeah so, you got a pencil?" Mick asked. "Hillshire apartments, number 227 on the east side, but I'm putting him to bed so if you're gonna stop by make it tomorrow or something."

Mick raised an eyebrow. Len took his pills.

Barry said something on the other end of the line. Mick grunted and hung up.

"He seems nice."

"He is." Len conceded, "Just as much of a ray of sunshine as you'd think a hero would be."

Mick studied him for a minute, then shrugged. "I've got to get back. You gonna keel over if I leave?"

"No." Len paused, "Thank you. I know you didn't have to do this."

Mick shrugged, "welcome."

It felt like the apartment got a little darker once the door shut behind Mick. Len Let sleep take him without protest.

After weeks of other life dreams, finding himself on the Waverider was almost a comfort. 

There were voices somewhere down the corridors, and a hum under the floors that said the ship was powered up, probably camouflage rather than actual flight. He was walking with purpose. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part of him that knew this was a dream, was trying to place the date. Was this the early days? Had he and Mick had their fight yet? Was Mick gone, or maybe he was already back, bruised and battered, and all Len's fault. He wasn't heading towards the cells at least. A woman came out of the med-bay talking to someone inside. She was black and for a moment he thought it was Shiera, but no. 

"Doesn't look like you're having much fun now." She said, and turned walking away from him.

Len turned to glance into the med bay, leaning against the doorway. Mick was there, a bottle in his hand as he sat sideways in the chair. Len wanted to ask who that was, but the dream rolled over him and what came out was, "Oh how the mighty have fallen."

Mick looked up, his face a mix of shock, then fear and pain. "Le-Leonard." He brought a hand up to his eyes, "I must be losing my mind."

No that wasn't right. When was this from? Len's memories were still spotty in places but he was sure he'd never seen that woman before and doubly certain Mick would never look at him like that. So why was he smiling?

"Of course you are. Why else would you still be here, taking orders like a well trained puppy. You're not right in the head Mick, that's why I'm here. To set you straight." It was his voice, but the words were wrong. He knew not to insinuate that Mick was losing it. After the fire it'd been more than a touchy subject. Was he trying to get under Mick's skin? Why? 

Len turned and walked back the way he'd come. There was a tug, and the dream shifted.

He wasn't on the Waverider, this corridor was dark, with stone walls and a watery scent to the air. Maybe not the sewers, but not far off either.  He knew Mick was coming, though how or why wasn't part of the dream.  Len relaxed. They used tunnels in plenty of heists. This was probably that time from the field museum. That had been a fun job.

Mick turned the corner, bringing up his gun instinctively, not his heat gun though, or even the .45 he'd carried before then. He had a full on Tommy gun. So not the field museum then. Len tried to remember where else this could be as his mouth spoke on script.

"Watch where you point that thing."

"Snart" Mick had that expression again, fear and frustration. 

"You shouldn't be here Mick. Capone's men might be from 1927 but their bullets work just fine. Do you really want to risk your life for a skirt and a geezer?" Len said, and that wasn't right.  That meant this was more recent, when they'd been on the Waverider. They'd never been to 1927, let alone Chicago 1927. Len would have remembered visiting the golden age of gangsters. 

A voice came from the coms, the same voice from before in the other vission, the black woman, "Any sign of the professor?"

Mick turned away looking down the corridor, trying to ignore Len, "Not yet."

Except apparently his memory self wasn't willing to be ignored. "Aw, sounds like a sweet little angel, whispering in your ear." His tone was wrong. He'd never faulted Mick for getting some tail. At least not after they'd broken up and Len had been forced to deal with his jealousy issues.

Mick glanced back at him, like he couldn't help himself.

"Problem is, angels always want you to do the right thing. and doing the right thing gets you killed. I should know. You want to stay alive, best listen to the devil. Get out now."

The alarms that sounded mached Len's mood perfectly. He hadn't-- If he was dead he couldn't be there. If he was there, some other version of him, then he couldn't have died.

"Too late" Len said. Him and not him and Mick was running down the corridor, running away. No. No, Mick--"

Len sat up gasping. He ran a hand over his face. It was clammy with dried sweat and he generally felt terrible but more in the 'I need a shower' way then the 'I'm going to throw up' way.

What the hell had that been? He thought he was done with having someone else in his head.

Apparently not.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

Going to the bar was not a good idea, Len was rational enough to acknowledge that. He was supposed to be desperate right now though, so at least the bad idea was working for him.

It wasn't Saints and Sinners. He wanted to be able to drink there in the future, and starting fights wasn't conducive to that. Instead he'd picked a bar midway between the highway and the industrial zone. Not a good part of town by any means, but not somewhere that the cops (or Barry) would pay too much attention to. There was a group of bikers, or racers or something at one end of the bar, and people heckling the dart players, so Len was forced into a seat by the door.

He'd barely got his first drink when his cell buzzed.

Scarlet: Where are you?

Len rolled his eyes and settled in. 

Len: I'm fine

Scarlet: I swung by to check on you and you weren't home. 

Len: Did you break into my apartment? I'll make a thief of you yet.

Len put his phone on the bar face down as it buzzed again. And again. And again. 

The guy two seats down glanced at it, then at him. "Wife?" he asked.

Len shook his head, taking another swallow, "No, just an interested party who doesn't like my methods."

The guy raised an eyebrow. He had very bushy eyebrows, and sideburns, and most importantly, a prison tattoo on his neck. "Your methods for what? Backing a cake?" His tone outlined how very not impressed he was.

Len took a drink and considered his answer. This guy wasn't going to turn him in if he said "robbing a bank" outright, but what was the fun in that.

"Liquidating goods."

That got the guy's attention. His eyebrows came together and he looked Len up and down. Then he grunted and stood, taking his drink to the crowd by the dart board.

That was one rumor started. A few more, give them some time to spread, and he'd have his man. The bartender was next, a few prodding questions, and a few not-quite lies. He turned around looking for another likely ear, and the guy stumbled into him.

He was one of the biker racer crowd, with a leather jacket and short hair dyed an eye searing shade of neon orange. Len pushed the guy back, turning up his nose at the combined smell of pot and tequila that poured off him.

"Hey don't you fucking push me man." The guy planted his feet and swayed closer.

"Then don't fall on people." Len started to turn away but the man grabbed his shoulder and tugged. Half seated on the bar stool, Len had no chance to catch his balance. He went down, hitting the floor on his side, his elbow cracking against the hardwood. 

_ Shouts, blood in his mouth and his ears ringing. A sneaker hit him in the ribs, another stomped down on his hand and he screamed. He looked up at the other boys. They weren't that much older, but there were enough of them it didn't matter. then he saw the glint of metal. _

Len came out of the memory with a gasp that barely held back from being a scream. He lashed out blindly, connected with something hard. Someone cursed. Someone else shouted. A boot came down in front of Len's face. He rolled away, scrambling to get back to his feet. 

More people had joined in the argument. It wasn't a full on bar fight yet. People would have already been on the floor if Mick was there, his Mick anyway. As it was it was still mostly posturing. 

The bartender slapped the flat of his hand on the bartop, yelling unfamiliar names. 

Len tensed when he felt the figure at his shoulder. He tried to brace himself, but when a the hand came it only pulled him to his feet. Len glanced at the kid. On the younger side for this crowd, black, no gang tattoos or prison ink that Len could see. He might have been talking to the racers earlier. Len could admit the kid looked familiar, but at this point Len wasn't going to trust anyone.

"Hey, back off man." the kid said, but not to him.

"You gonna try something?" Len didn't see who said it, not that it mattered.

The kid looked at the offender and shook his head in disgust. "Fuck that, you aint worth it."

The kid met Len's eyes, and he was finally able to place him. It was the West kid who'd been tagging along with Team Flash. The kid nodded to the door, a question in his eyes. Len nodded and shrugged off a helping hand. 

The air of the parking lot stank with exhaust fumes but it was still a far sight better than inside.  Len did a quick inventory. Bruises from the fall and his elbow wasn't going to thank him any time soon, but no open wounds.

"Thanks."

"Yeah, no problem." The kid, Wally, rubbed a hand over his mouth, "What were you doing in there anyway? I thought you and, ah. I thought there was a plan."

"There is. I admit the fight wasn't part of it, but they know I who I am now. Word will get around." 

"Right because having a bad reputation is a good thing." Wally had walked them over to a low-slung car, and leaned on the hood.

"You fit right in." Len pointed out, "What are you doing out here anyway?"

Wally shrugged, rubbed at his mouth again. "Nothing, just meeting some guys."

Len waited, but Wally didn't elaborate. "You do remember I was one of the bad guys right? I'm not going to spill if you were looking for a little thrill."

"I used to race okay? But if my dad found out I was hanging out with these guys again, I'd never hear the end of it. I just needed to get out of there, y'know? Barry and Iris are dancing around each other, and not in a good way. Cisco and Barry are friends, until they remember they aren't, and Wells..." He rolled his shoulders in a shrug that went all the way down his arms.

"I didn't realize things were that dysfunctional."

"You have no idea man. Barry's been over the moon since you showed up, and not just 'cause he likes you."

Len cleared his throat. Wally probably meant Barry liked him as a person. Barry liked everyone. They challenged each other. They had an understanding. The fact Barry was worried about him and checked up with him when he didn't have to didn't mean he liked Len romantically. Len reminded himself of the facts firmly before pulling himself back to the present.

"Well, I don't think I can do anything more tonight. Thanks for the backup though. Don't tell Barry but you're a lot smoother at it then he is."

"Wait he tried to?" Wally pointed back at the bar, "Oh man, I have not heard this story."

Len leaned back against the car, smiling to himself at the memory. "He pretended to be a safecracker named Sam. Things happened pretty fast so he was able to get away with it, but he clearly had no idea how things tend to go. That was, things didn't end well on that one, but not because of him."

"Oh, sorry." Wally shifted, glanced at the car then at the bar then back. "Hey ah, can I ask you something? It's about Alchemy."

Len stiffened. "What about him?"

"Well, okay, you know Magenta, the girl who didn't drop the boat on the hospital?"

Len nodded.

"She told the team a bit about Alchemy. He called to her after she had these dreams. Dreams of the other timeline, where she had powers. He talked to her. Told her she could have powers if she did what he said." 

Len nodded again, "He mentioned something like that when he spoke to me, too."

"Right so," Wally licked his lips, opened his hands, then closed them again, like he didn't know what he actually wanted to do. "I've been having dreams."

Len let out a breath. "dreams where you had powers?"

Wally nodded. "I was a speedster, Kid Flash."

Len turned away. He didn't want to disappoint the kid, but he wasn't going to lie. "Sorry, but I think I'd remember if I had to fight two speedsters in the other timeline."

"No." Wally protested, "Because there are three timelines right? So even if you don't remember it, it's from the other one."

Len looked back at Wally. The kid looked desperate. "Okay, maybe." He conceded. "I'm hardly one to say that someone's memories aren't real, but you might not want to go down this path."

Wally thumbed over his mouth then shook his head. he started to turn away then turned back. "You know I expect that from my dad, from Barry even, but you? No way man." 

"Powers or no powers, stepping into this world is a choice you can't take back." Len spoke over him.

"In the other world I kidnaped Caitlin and strapped her to a bomb to force the Flash to fight me. I kidnaped Cisco and his brother, and threatened to ice their hands if they didn't give me his identity. And I'm one of the nice ones. Ask Caitlin about her fiance some time, or talk to Joe about the Mardon brothers, and I'm sure you've heard all about Barry's mother." He took a breath, and forced himself to slow down. "I know you're young and want to leave your mark on things. Want to make a difference. Your dad, he may not be perfect. God knows he and I will never agree on a lot of things, but it's not the powers he's objecting to."

"Yeah well, It's still my choice." Wally met his eyes. Len knew he'd done stupid things when he was that age, and with less backup too. He leaned back against the car. 

"Alright kid. I'll tell you what I know, but let's find a diner or something. I'd never hear the end of it if I froze something off unintentionally." He looked down at the car, then over at the road, trying to remember what was nearby. Wally took a step closer his hand out.

"Yeah, about that. I'm really sorry." 

Len started to turn, but Wally was already inside his guard. He pushed Len against the car, pressing something against his arm. There was a pinch, and that spot started to go numb. Len twisted swinging wildly. His bad elbow connected. Pain shot up his arm. Wally was stepping back though, so Len forced it down.

"What the fuck did you give me?" Len snarled.

"Tranquilizer, I'm sorry man. It'll just knock you out. Alchemy wants you alive." Wally had his hands up, keeping Len boxed into the car, but not getting close enough that a lucky strike could take him. 

"So much for being one of the good guys." Even as Len said it, the numbness was spreading down his arm and across his chest. The cold metal of the car pressed against the back of his neck as his legs started to give out. He couldn't tell if the night had always been that dark or not. Wally took a half step forward. The yellow of his shirt was a block of color, then even that was gone. 

Len's last fuzzy thought was to wonder if Barry knew, and what it meant if he did.

 

<><><>

 

Len realized he was dreaming at once, and like all his lucid dreams lately, he couldn't do a thing about it. 

He was walking through a war zone. Men in uniform called out orders and followed orders and were generally miserable.  He was out of place, but no one seemed to have the time to care. Len wondered if he was in Savage's future war or if this was somewhere new. It wasn't his own time, he was sure of that.

He ducked into a tent, stepping to the side so he wasn't blocking the door, and looked around. Men were laid out in beds, bloody bandages giving rise to their pain. He recognized the woman first: She'd been on the Waverider, the new girl. Then he saw Mick, standing in the middle of the isle of beds, a basket of bread in his arms. He wanted to go to him, to thank god, Mick hadn't ended up in one of these beds. Instead he smirked and slipped outside again. He stopped behind a parked truck and waited. Mick came out a minute later.

"How the mighty have fallen." Len sneered.

Internally his heart sank. Another memory where he tormented his friend.

"You said that last time." Mick was fiddling with his gloves, clenching and unclenching his hands. He stared straight ahead, as if forcing himself not to look at Len. Len didn't blame him. They hadn't had enough time together after they'd got him back from the time masters for Len to figure out where the new lines were, but messing with his head had to be one of them.

Len's mouth called Mick a dog, and Len flinched in unison with Mick.

"Stay on mission, gotta find this hobbit guy." Mick muttered to himself.

"J.R.R. Tolkin, why? hoping for an autograph?"

Mick was angry or frustrated enough to snap at him "I don't even know who that guy is. All I know is I got to find the hobbit guy who knows the guy who's buried with Jesus's blood. Then we can destroy the spear of destiny."

Len could feel his counterpart's excitement at the words. He knew what that meant and why it was important, but Len was only getting flashes.

He was smirking again "Mick, Mick, Mick, when have we destroyed anything we've ever stolen, let alone the most valuable score in the universe. What have they done to you?" Len noted how his voice had gone soft and cajoling, and added it to the guy's shit list even as he crowed in victory. 

He'd slipped up. They had destroyed things they'd stolen, but only after their second stint in Iron Heights. Things had always been too close to the wire before then. Len had been young and stupid enough that he always thought he could get away. Hadn't learned how to cut his losses yet.  

Which actually explained a lot about what he was remembering. This version of him, was digging at Mick. Yes he wanted to get under his skin, but he was choosing a way that hurt. Part of it was that he didn't know exactly how much it hurt, but he was also letting his own emotions cloud things. Had this Len just broken up with Mick? Had they been fighting? Was it that bad heist that they'd barely escaped from, or one of the successful ones that Len had thought would lead somewhere and never had? 

Still, reasons didn't matter when the results spoke for themselves.

If he ever saw Mick again he'd have to apologize.

Len realized he'd been drifting through most of the exchange.

"You're in my head, you're a, you're an illumination." Mick still wasn't looking at him.

"a hallucination." Len said, and it was actually soft, a hint of the care behind the barbs coming through.

"That's it." Mick had pulled into himself. Like with the fire only worse.

Len started to turn away. It hurt. Len almost thought his past self realized it too, then the anger bubbled up. He turned and punched Mick with all the strength in his arm and shoulder.

"Now did that feel like a hallucination?" Len turned and walked all the way out of the dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick comment on Wally's choices here:  
> I'm writing this story from Len's POV and up to now Len hasn't really paid attention to Wally, but if I was telling it from Wally's perspective his actions would only be desperate not crazy. Part of it is that he's been having flashes and dreams like Len was in early chapters. Like in the show, those visions are causing seizures. Unlike in the show, no one is addressing the fact that his mind is splitting apart and there's potential brain damage on the line. Joe isn't going to get talked around if Barry is too focused on having Len back and Iris hating him. Iris isn't going to listen if she's pulling away from everyone because she's uncomfortable around Barry. Cisco and Caitlin don't really know Wally and don't have a lot of say with Joe even if they were willing to throw in on his side. They are both also dealing with their own things.
> 
> Wally is desperate, not just for his speed, but to stay alive. Plus from what Len told them, Alchemy didn't want to hurt him. He wanted to maybe recruit Len, maybe work with him. None of the other people who went to Alchemy died, at least not until later and the name scrawled on the wall was Savitar, not Alchemy.
> 
> Was this the right way to do go about it? No. But Wally doesn't know how long he has, so he's trying to force his way through it, rather then go in prepared and with backup, like in the show.


	12. Chapter 12

 

Len sadly did know what coming up from drugs felt like.  This time not only did he have the splitting headache and the tingling numbness in his fingers, but he was still bruised all up his side. On top of everything he'd been shoved in the back seat of a car while he was out and from the way his joints were complaining, it hadn't been a very smooth ride. 

Cold air washed over his legs. Something moved down by his feet, but the drugs still had the world spinning. It tugged at him. He scooted about a foot and his arm fell into the footwell.

"Fuck." 

Len recognised that voice. He was coming back to himself and that voice... They'd been talking. The kid, that was it. The kid from team Flash, Wally. 

He'd drugged him. Len grunted, and tried to get up and show his displeasure but only managed to roll further into the footwell.

Wally grumbled something else. He managed to get ahold of one of Len's legs and gave it another firm pull. Len's head knocked against the back of the seat. It made him blink and he was able to push away the last of the drug.

"Wally?" He squinted at the kid.

"Damn it." Wally said under his breath. He glanced at a shadowed doorway behind him, then set his face in a stubborn frown and took a breath.

Len didn't let him say whatever it was. 

He kicked out forcing Wally back. Len chased him, stumbling out of the car. He didn't know where he was or how long he'd been out, but the skyline was familiar, so he was still in Central. The small gravel lot Wally had parked in was bordered on two sides by faceless concrete buildings. There was some kind of tunnel, possibly for maintenance, leading down into one of the structures. The road on the other side of the car was quiet. all the other buildings in the area locked up tight. The chance of someone wondering by would have been slim even if it wasn't the early hours of the morning. Len focused back on Wally.

"Bit of advice West: if you're going to kidnap someone tie them up, even if they are out cold."

Wally gritted his teeth, and braced his shoulders. "This is my one chance man. It’s my life. I can't let you walk out of here. You said you wanted to talk to Alchemy anyway."

"On my terms." Len snarled back. Wally was between him and the road. He could try to run. He could fight. Except a little voice in the back of his mind reminded him that apart from the tussle with Flash, he hadn't been in a real fight in years. Not in this lifetime anyway. In this lifetime he didn't train so he could outrun the cops, or put down whatever threatened his territory. That bar fight had been a joke. It was barely getting started and he'd been on the ground. His side was covered in bruises he was trying to ignore, and his head was still pounding. Wally was just some punk kid, but at this point that didn't lower his odds.

Len patted his pockets. Wally saw the movement and shook his head. "I may not be an expert on kidnapping but I know to take a guy's phone. No hold out knife either."

No, no knife, but his goggles were still in his jacket pocket, and they had built in coms. He managed to slip a hand into his pocket, and turn them on. Not that he had any idea if anyone was listening. It was the middle of the night after all. 

"Look," Wally tried, hand outstretched. "Just come with me. You said you want to talk to him. Well I know he's here. I can feel it."  His hand clenched on open air. There was desperation on his face. 

Len took a half step back. Desperation could be a very dangerous thing.

Wally frowned. "How'd you feel when it all started happening? I'm going crazy, wondering if any of this is real. I need my speed." He stepped forward, and Len Stepped back trying to keep the distance between them and more aware than ever of the wall behind him. 

"I'm not going to let you take it from me."

Wally launched himself forward gravel grinding under his sneakers. Len twisted sideways. If he could get past him, out to the road he'd have more options. Wally caught at his arm. Tugged him back.

Len yelped as his elbow screamed. He lashed out, felt something connect. Wally grunted, but it wasn't enough. He got an arm around Len, and put his weight behind the tackle. 

For the second time that night Len hit the ground. This time he rolled with it, ducking his head and trusting his jacket to keep out the worst of the gravel. Wally's elbow dug into his ribs.

For a scattered few minutes everything was touch and instinct. The kind of dirty uncoordinated fighting that you never saw in movies because it wasn't bloody or fancy enough to be impressive. Every time one of them tried to get back to their feet, the other would yank at a limb or a loose bit of clothing and it would start again.

They were both out of breath but still full of determination when the voice cut the fight short.

"I hope this isn't on my account."

Len shoved at Wally, trying to get away and to his feet. He had nowhere to go, back to the wall, so for once Wally didn't fight him.

Alchemy stood silhouetted against the car's headlights. The wind tugged at the hem of his green cloak, showing off the body armor. He offered a dark hand, pulling Wally to his feet. The kid was speechless.

Finally Wally managed to swallow and say, "You wanted to talk to him. I brought him, so you'll give me my speed right?"

Alchemy turned, his glowing eyes studying Wally. "Yes," he said at last.

The kid started to turn to Len, his expression as open and hopeful as Barry's usually was. 

Len glaired, snapping at him before he could start, "Don't start."

"Hey now," Alchemy said, holding out his hands. "No need to fight. We've all got bigger enemies." He stepped forward towards Len. The fire from his eyes pooled around his head, trapped by his hood, making his dark features darker still in contrast.

Len had a momentary sense of Deja-vu, but he didn't know if it was something from this life, his other life or the new dreams.

"Let's talk." Alchemy said. Len didn't reply still furiously trying to think of a way out. Alchemy gestured towards the tunnel.

Len took a slow breath. Captain Cold would tell him to go screw himself, but in that moment Len didn't feel much like his otherworld alter ego. He was hurt. He didn't have a weapon. He was outnumbered, assuming Wally would side with Alchemy if he tried anything. And he had no idea what Alchemy was capable of. Still, going down a dark tunnel with a supervillain was never a good idea.

"Whatever you have to say, you can say it here."

Len could feel Alchemy's burning gaze, as he tipped his head to the side. He turned and looked at Wally, and the car, and the street.

"No," Alchemy shook his head, "we can't risk it. Savatar--" he stopped seemingly without reason, paused listening for a moment then turned back to Len. "You're going to have to trust me."

"Because you've given me so much reason to." Len said, "No thanks."

Alchemy growled to himself. One hand went to something under his cloak and Len braced in case he drew a weapon. Instead Alchemy released a breath. "Yeah, the timeline, I remember."

"Remember what?" Wally asked. Len was wondering the same thing.

"Nothing." Alchemy turned to Len. "I have your answers, but I won't force you to come with me. Just know that this is your last chance. After tonight, you're out of time." He shrugged, a gesture that was strangely open. Then he nodded to Wally to follow him, and they headed for the tunnel. As they stepped into the deeper darkness Alchemy lifted a hand and fire leapt up to light their way. Len watched until they turned a corner and the light faded.

Len sagged against the wall. He felt weak, drained. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. If he'd come here on his own terms, with a plan things would have been different.

_ Coward. _

No just playing it smart. He didn't need to jump into something when he didn't know how deep things went. He didn't need another Rip Hunter, another Savage. 

He moved to the car. The back passenger door still stood open.  He closed it and circled to the drivers side. Len found his phone, and knife just sitting there on the seat.

The kid really had no idea what he was getting into.

_ Len rocked on the balls of his feet. Merlin and Dhark completely at ease and in control. Len was attempting to project the same. _

_ “So, Mr.Rory's having second thoughts?“ _

_ “Mick's just a little confused. I can control him.” _

Len shook his head. A part of him was still saying to drive away and not look back, but he'd done stupid, desperate things too. The key was to live through them and not make the same mistake twice. 

He grabbed his phone. Barry picked up on the second ring. "Len? What time is it?"

"I don't know. How fast can you get to... no, how fast can you track my phone?"

Suddenly Barry sounded wide awake. "Five minutes, maybe ten depending on the cell towers. Are you okay?

"Wally did something stupid. I'm going in after him. Backup would be appreciated."

The other end of the line turned to static. Len tossed the phone back in the car. No point taking it down into the tunnels where it would probably lose signal. Len thought longingly of his cold gun as he stepped into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter, but the good news is I have the next three chapters written (still need to do final editing) so you won't have to wait long. I'm trying to establish a schedule where I post alternate chapters of this and Inheritance, by new Batman Beyond story, every week.
> 
> Also I have been planning these next few chapters since almost the beginning. And I can't wait to see all your reactions. Mwahahahahahaha


	13. Chapter 13

The tunnel turned a few times, but as far as Len could tell it didn't branch. When he started to see a faint light around the next corner, Len slowed. 

The room he peeked into wasn't what he had expected. Instead of a sewer or some stone temple, Len found himself looking into a lab. There were whiteboards covered in odd round symbols, and equations.  Tables covered in equipment that Len couldn't even guess the purpose of, along with the more traditional beakers and vials of strange colored liquid. 

Wally stood in the middle of it, shifting from foot to foot. He handed something to alchemy, who bent over a microscope with his hood thrown back. He was a black man, with hair trimmed close to his scalp, and wreathed in flame. With his back turned Len couldn't see anything more detailed, but again he got the sense that he knew him. Alchemy muttered something, then nodded to himself. 

When he turned, Len couldn't stop the shocked curse that fell from his lips.

"Well, look who decided to join us after all." Alchemy said from the face of Jefferson Jaxson. "I'll be right with you." 

Jax pulled something, a wand or rod of old wood from under his cloak, and sent a bolt of white lightning straight for Wally.  Len twisted away, blinking his vision clear. Wally was on the floor twitching and still covered in sparks.

"What the hell?!" He stalked forward, ready to wring his answers from Jax's throat if need be. 

Jax offered up his hands without dropping the rod, which was still glowing. "Hey easy man. I'm on your side remember? You do remember that right?"

Yes, yes he remembered, and it seemed that this Jax knew him. Which meant he wasn't this worlds doppelganger gone rogue, but the Legend Len remembered. Len couldn't pinpoint exactly what point in their adventures he was from, but he wasn't going to find out if he killed him.

Len gritted his teeth and crossed his arms so he wouldn't be tempted to throw something. "Is he alright?" he asked, nodding to Wally. Most of the sparks had died away, but he still wasn't moving.

"He'll be in a coma for the next few weeks. Apparently it takes time for the brain to acclimate to running at those speeds, but he'll be fine." 

"Than we have time for answers. Why are you here? and why pretend to be--" He waved a hand at Jax's costume, "Alchemy."

"You don't want to know why you're here?"

"I was getting to that. Answer the question."

Jax rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay, short version? There's some crappy stuff going on that me and the team were trying to sort out, but then you showed up. Only you were dead, y'know?"

Len nodded as things started making sense, "Yes I was there for that, or the other me. You mean the spear don't you? What is it exactly?"

Jax gestured at the white boards. "Complicated mostly. Ask Constantine and it's some powerful magical artifact. Ask Booster Gold and it's some nexus of cosmic forces. You said it was important in saving the future, so--" he shrugged.

"And when did I say that?"

Jax grinned, "Either about two months from now, or a couple of years ago, take your pick."

Len sighed, and rubbed at his eyes, letting his shoulders relax. "Do you know why this is happening?"

"Scientifically? Lily thinks it has to do with the conservation of mass and energy. Turns out blowing up the oculus had a lot more consequences then any of us realized. You've got some kind of plan to deal with it, but I only know my part." He waved at the room around them.   

Len mulled that over. It did sound like him, and the Legends would probably trust him without asking too many questions. Except: "Did I give you a reason to create a whole new identity and not contact the Flash?"

Jax's face turned dead serious, "Look, Flash can not know I'm here. There's this enemy, You'll hear about him soon if you haven't yet. Savatar. If Flash finds me, then he can find me. You made me swear not to let that happen." 

Len whinced, "That might be a problem. I called Flash for backup, before I came down here."

Jax froze in shock, then launched into motion. He turned, sweeping the contents of his desk onto the floor. Glass shattered but he was already moving on. With one hand he pulled an eraser over the whiteboard, as he pulled up his hood with the other.

"Jax, "Len tried.

The young man spun on him, snarling "Alchemy. Firestorm was never here. Can never be here, not now." Whether it was some technology in the hood or just Jax's rage, he sounded like a different person.

Before Len could demand answers, the lights overhead went red. Jax grabbed Len's arm, spinning him to face the doorway. Flash came down the tunnel in a storm of lightning. He stopped, over Wally, eyes trailing over Len and Alchemy, and the old wooden rod pressed to Len's throat. 

"Flash." Alchemy acknowledged, and it was Alchemy now, even though Len knew who was under the hood.

"Let him go. No one has to get hurt," Flash said. He stepped forward slowly, putting himself between Wally's still form and the rest of them. He raised his hands. Len flinched as the rod jabbed a little deeper.

"That's close enough. Don't push me to do something neither of us want." Alchemy took a step back pulling Len with him.

"Len, it's going to be okay," Flash met his eyes, and he nodded. 

This whole thing seemed ridiculous, but Jax clearly wasn't going to listen. Maybe he even had good reason. Len held his hands out to the side, and walked slowly backwards Following Jax's lead.

"Let him go Alchemy. We can work this out."

Len's heels hit a low platform and he stumbled as he stepped onto it. The metal rang under his steps.

"Not this time." Alchemy whispered. The platform started to humm, vibrating up his legs.  Len glanced down, and started to turn. 

"You wanted answers," Alchemy said. 

The question on Len's lips was never voiced. He caught a glimpse of Jax's glowing eyes, wavering in the charged air. Alchemy shoved him, leveling the rod at his chest, white lightning coursing down it. Behind him Flash yelled something that was lost in the roaring in his ears. Alchemy flickered, and vanished. 

The lightning struck, and pulled Len into the dark.


	14. Chapter 14

 

Len stood in darkness. He couldn't see anything about the space he was in, not even the floor he was standing on. The last thing he remembered was Alchemy shooting him. How he'd gotten here, or where exactly here was, he couldn't say. The cold gun was a comforting weight against his thigh, so at least he was armed.

Except that wasn't right. He hadn't had the cold gun in Alchemy's lab, and no one in their right mind would give him his primary weapon when in a situation like this. He drew it, thumbing at the charger. The blue glow illuminated his hands if nothing else. It was fully functional.

Len sighed and reholstered the cold gun. Wherever he was, it didn't look like he could shoot his way out.

With nothing else to try, Len started walking.

It only took a handful of steps before the light started to slide into view.  The dark parted like a fog and Len found himself looking at a maze of lights. Blue, green, red, white, the lines were thin as spider thread but bright as neon. They traced a pattern in the air, so big that it took Len a minute to find the true shape of it. 

It was a sphere. A globe the size of a city block with so many layers it might as well have been solid. A small voice in the back on his mind noted that it was not hurting his eyes even though it should be. Instead every detail he focuses on just let him see more and clearer. 

It was like a wire-frame from some of his CAD programs. Architecture stripped down to its simplest form, single lines representing miles of cable or piping and hundreds of hours of work.

A sound of raw frustration broke the silence. Len hadn't even noticed the figure silhouetted against the light. It was a man bent over some kind of table or console. Like with the globe the second he focused the figure was clear: worn blue parka, black turtleneck, close shaved scalp slowly going silver. It was a version of himself. Captain Cold at the height of his skill.

Len relaxed. It was a dream. Maybe not like the last few dreams since back then he'd been a passenger not an outside observer, but that was probably because of whatever Jax did. This didn't look like the version who was tormenting Mick at least.

Len stepped forward, casually watching the globe and his other self. For simplicity's sake Len decided to call the other him Cold. The man tensed. Len glanced back at the globe, wondering what had gone wrong. Cold turned, and Len found himself looking down the barrel of his own gun.

"Well that's new." Len said casually. Was this another dimension then? Had he actually been sent to another time? He seemed to remember that interacting with himself was a bad thing, but he hadn't been paying much attention when Rip had been giving that speech.

"New?" Cold snarls. His Central City slums accent was stronger then Len realized or maybe remembered.

Len lifted his open hands for appearances sake. "I got hit by a bolt of energy or maybe magic. Thought you were a hallucination. I've been having a lot of them recently, to be fair."

Cold lifted an eyebrow then let the cold gun drop to his side. Len noted he didn't actually holster it. 

"Figures. The universe has a sick sense of humor." He looked Len up and down. "Alternate timeline?" 

Len looked down at himself, fully taking in his appearance for the first time. He had the cold gun in his thigh holster, and the goggles around his neck, but otherwise he was wearing an off the rack suit. His second best one in fact. The suit he wore to the office when he had a lot of meetings and wanted to be comfortable but still look good. His tie was red with little yellow lightning bolts, a novelty thing he'd gotten from a white elephant exchange at the Christmas party last year. He'd forgotten he even owned it, but it made him smile thinking about how Barry would react.

"Something like that." Len nodded to the console, "What are you trying to do?"

Cold glanced back at the globe and sneered, "most recently? Find a user's manual."

Len blinked, then laughed as it all clicked into place.

"Something funny?" Cold asked.

"That's what Jax meant when he said he'd give me answers. This isn't just a dream, we're actually in the oculus. You're not just Captain Cold. You're the version of me who blew it up."

Cold made a mocking little bow, a strained smile tight on his features. "I see my reputation precedes me." He didn't sound happy about it. "Apparently my self sacrifice landed me here. The most boring hell in existence. I'm pretty sure this thing could get me out of here, I just can't get it to work."

Len looked up at the globe again. If they were somehow inside the oculus, and this was how his mind was interpreting time than... "I think I can."

Cold raised an eyebrow in skeptical surprise, but willingly moved aside as Len took the spot in front of the controls. They weren't familiar, but they weren't unfamiliar either, a strange cross between the waverider, a regular keyboard and some low budget sci-fi thing. He started with what he knew and looked up at the model.

He was looking up at time, or maybe how time related to space. It was beautiful and complex and he had no idea if what he was doing would change things out in the real world. Except a past version of himself was standing at his shoulder so wouldn't he already know if something had broken? He couldn't remember this happening from the other side, but surely the ripples would have been there.

Was it disrespectful to play god like this? He didn't want to end up like the time masters. He didn't think that was a real option, but still.

"Something wrong?" Cold asked.

Len took a breath, and shook his head. "Think of it like a blueprint. I'm an architect, I work with programs like this every day. If I can just hide the unnecessary bits." He picked a layer, focused on it, then discarded it as not what he was looking for. Above him a tracery of lines faded into the background their light dimming. He examined a second, then a third. 

It took a while. Looking at each layer was like looking at a lifeline, glowing photographs, unfamiliar dates and times, meanings that Len couldn't understand assigned to ordinary things. Some strands were tangled together into families or communities. He was able to discard whole sections once he realized they were for the wrong part of the world or possibly the wrong dimension. 

The strange slash in the mosaic was the first sign he was headed in the right direction. Central City, cut open and turned into a tangled mess three times over. He grabbed the relevant strands, pushing the rest to the background.

"Here, I think this is the particle accelerator explosion, or maybe that black hole." He gestured to the relevant section and Cold nodded. "Which means..." Len trailed off searching frantically for that missing piece, the disruption of the pattern where Flash had cracked open time and made this all possible.

"There do you see it?" It wasn't as dramatic as the explosion, but there was a spot where a scattering of threads were yanked sideways. Others lost the pattern like someone had dropped a stitch or tangled with themselves before resuming the pattern. All of them were connected to a bright red thread.

"What am I looking at?" Cold asked.

Len looked at Cold, and realized all over again where and when he was. He could find another spot to send his counterpart, break the loop they were in, and go back to his everyday life. Except he'd made that choice already and he wasn't one to go back on his word even, or maybe especially, to himself. He'd wanted answers, even if those answers were that he'd done it to himself.

Len sat on the edge of the console and waited until Cold looked at him. "Flash changed the timeline."

"Oh did he now? What did he do this time?" Len could hear the fond exasperation in his counterpart's voice.

"Doesn't matter, point is, I'm from the new timeline. A month or so ago I was living a normal boring life when I could suddenly remember, traveling through time, and fighting the Flash and everything else up to dying at the oculus."

Cold considered that, "So you are my future self?"

"I'm another self with memories of two lifetimes."

"You," Cold hesitated, studying Len. His eyes caught on the tie, the goggles, the gun. "You'd let me do that? Overwrite your life?"

Len shrugged. "I haven't lost anything worth keeping. Besides, I've already made my choice, you haven't."

"But you're here..." Cold made a circular gesture. 

"Time loops, yeah, but that doesn't mean we don't have free will. Or wasn't that the point of your dramatic death."

Cold snorted. He looked up at the remaining red and gold lines. "We both know I'll always choose life over a cage, and this is definitely that."

Len nodded and turned back to the controls. It took a few minutes to find a thread he recognized, other then the obvious one. It was Piper ironically enough. From there he traced through the other man's choices until he found Len's proposed heist. His own thread was white and blue because of course it was. There was a moment when he thought of scrolling forward, looking into his future, but first thing first.

The abrupt right turn his life had taken wasn't hard to find. The dark blue of Cold's line melting into his own seamlessly.

"There." He pulled the view in as close as he could, until it was like looking at himself. Yet another version, oblivious to both himself and Cold, somehow both more real and less. Frozen in a single moment, sitting at his desk.

"Simple as that?" Cold asked.

Len shrugged. "The hard part comes after."

Cold holstered his gun, and offered his hand. "Thank you."

Len gave him a wry smirk, "My pleasure."

Cold turned and reached for the model. He faded before his fingers reached the light.

Len slumped against the console. He still didn't know if it was the right choice but now at least he knew it had been his to make. His hands started shaking as he let the tension ease away. Why this was more stressful than a car chase and fight with the Flash he would never know.

"Huh, guess I should have expected."

Len whipped his head up at the new voice and saw, himself... again. The newest version still had the cold gun and goggles, but instead of a parka he wore skin tight black latex under a blue vest that seemed to do double duty as protection against the elements and body armor. There were more lines around his eyes and maybe more silver in his hair, though he still wore it short so it was hard to tell.

He strolled forward with a kind of casual confidence that Len knew had to be a mask, though for what he couldn't guess. He seemed to be paying more attention to the model then to Len.

"You," Len trailed off. He licked his lips and then realized he didn't actually know what to say.

"Yeah, ghost of Christmas future and all that. Call me Captain, that'll probably be easiest."

Len crossed his arms his mind racing over the options, "Are you here to tell me to change my ways?"

The new copy, the Captain, scoffed. "What? Go back to the office and ignore things? No thanks. or did you mean thieving? Heroing?"

Len wasn't sure what he had meant.

Captain gestured at the map. Len glanced up at it, "I haven't looked ahead yet."

Captain nodded, and reached for the controls. The lights blurred, spinning to a new point, a new tangle. Len didn't understand what he was seeing, turns were made that didn't match up with anything from before. It was like someone had tried to design a building without walls, or a bridge without supports. He wasn't seeing the whole picture, he couldn't be, because what he was seeing made no sense. 

"Do you see it?" Captain asked in a strange mirror of Len's earlier conversation.

Len hesitated. He started to reach for the controls, but Captain was already adjusting the scale, filtering in some layers and getting rid of others. The picture was still broken, but Len was starting to see how it got there, the outlines of events leading up to the snare.

"What happens?" Len focused back on the Captain. 

The Captain hesitated, pressing his lips together before he finally spoke, "You met with Alchemy? You're having the dreams?"

"Yes on both counts. Why? Shouldn't you know?" Then it clicked into place, "You're the future version who told Jax to go to the past. You want to clue me in on the plan there? Because let me tell you, I have had one hell of a night."

"Ah, that's when you're from." Captain shook his head. "I can't tell you everything. Multiple timelines, multiple worlds. You might not be the me I remember. I might not be the you, who hopefully makes it back here one day. This," he waved a hand at the model, "is only a snapshot. I've looked through the timeline more than I care to admit. It changes, but... There are key points that you're going to have to deal with."

"and Jax is part of that?"

"To a certain extent, He's guarding a piece of the Spear of Destiny. and also working out some math for me, and yes, giving you the push you needed. but there are other things you need to know." Captain's hands flew over the controls again, zooming in on a new scisum. "If they haven't already, the Dominators will soon attack. They're a threat big enough to pull everyone together, but you can't fight them. Your task comes later."

"Why?" Len broke in.

"Because of Doomworld." 

Len rolled his eyes, "Cisco's getting a bit out of hand."

"Wasn't him actually, but that's not the point."

Len crossed his arms, "No. The point is that you're spouting out vague prophecies like every crappy fantasy novel I've ever read."

Captain faced him, "And what if I tell you something that doesn't happen? What if you're waiting for someone to make a move, and they catch you off guard, because the timeline changed?" Captain drew in a breath and Len recognised the frustration in the way he held himself. 

Len nodded, conceding the point. 

"What I can tell you, is that when the Dominators attack, the Flash will call in allies. The Legends will be among them, but if they learn you're alive things will be a lot harder down the line. A lot more people end up dead. When Arrow and his team are taken, they can escape by themselves. but there will be a day, maybe two, where you can act when everyone will be distracted." 

Len nodded committing it to memory. 

"Savitar-- Zoom, probably won't interfere with the dominators, but he will show up afterword. He's from the future, and has access to the time stream."

Len nodded to the lights, "Like this?"

Captain shrugged and shook his head. "Not precisely. I know there are things he can't see, but I don't know why. He's dangerous. You can't listen to him. You can't trust him."

Len settled back on his heels. "We've dealt with speedsters before, even time traveling speedsters, what makes him so dangerous?"

Captain looked up at the model again. when he spoke his voice was low, "Doomworld. The war Alchemy mentioned; the Legends are already fighting it. The Legion of Doom will try to use the spear of destiny to rewrite reality." He lifted a hand and traced a slash across the model. 

"but we're going to stop them." Len prompted in a soft voice.

Captain shrugged "I was their hidden ace. We managed to keep them from getting the last piece, but people died. That's when we found out that even the shards of the spear can bend reality. They amplify the abilities of anyone who can tap into them. Merlin is functionally immortal when I'm from. Dhark has more magic then you can imagine, and Zoom has become a god of speed. Jax took our piece of the spear to try to find a way to destroy it without causing a backlash. Since he already changes the shape of things, he can tap into the spear to give others abilities, and send us here. This is our power, forever bound to the timeline because of one choice."

Len looked up at the map of time, "You're trying to fix it, find a way to keep the spear out of their hands." 

"I haven't succeeded yet." the Captain shrugged. "There are three of them. You know how to handle the speedster, but the others aren't as easy. Don't underestimate them. I don't know how the battle will go." He turned back to Len, "Pay attention to the dreams, they're real and they should give you some clues. They're tied back to this." he waved at the map of light.

Len nodded. That much he could understand. 

"and presuming I survive?" Len asked.

"Then you'll be doing better than me."

Len stopped and let that sink in. He suddenly felt very small and somehow both very old and very young. How had all of this landed on his shoulders? Well, none of it had happened yet, there was still a chance. He had to believe that.

"I'm sorry," Len said at last. "Is there anything I can do?"

Captain looked at him side on, "just save the world."

Len nooded. He looked up at the map, then out into the dark. Some instinct whispered that he wasn't trapped here like Cold had been. If he wanted to leave, all he had to do was let go. 

Len took a step towards the dark.

"And Len?" Captain called. 

Len glanced back over his shoulder.

"Give Barry a kiss for me."

Len's heart fluttered, but he managed a nod before the dark took him.

 

<><><>

 

Len woke with a start. Bright fluorescent lights screamed down at him, creating a halo around a familiar face.

"Snow?" Len mumbled.

She did something with his arm, "yes, that's good. Can you tell me who the president is?"

Len blinked several times trying to get his eyes to adjust faster. "Depends, what year is it?"

"You know, considering your history, I'm going to accept that answer. Welcome back Mr. Snart. We've all been worried about you."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few questions answered and even more asked.  
> This chapter marks a turning point for this story. In my original outline a long long time ago, a had this as the end... as you can tell that didn't happen. I considered making the next arc a sequel story, but i felt it wasn't self contained enough for that.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I wanted to have this chapter up yesterday but I got caught up in things. Anyway, hope you like it.

Len had been asleep for a day and a half. Barry had carried him and Wally back to STAR Labs after Alchemy had vanished. He'd called Caitlin, who hadn't been able to find anything wrong with Len. She had found things wrong with Wally. He was showing the same false flat-lining that Barry had shown in the early days of his coma. No one had been sure if or when either of them would wake up.

Caitlin laid out the events in a calm reassuring manner while checking his vitals and running tests that he could only guess at. They were alone in the lab since Barry was at work and Cisco was sitting with Wally. Eventually Caitlin ran out of things to fill the silence with and asked the question Len had known was coming.

"What happened?"

"I--" he stopped, and looked down at his hands. "I'm not sure how much I should say."

Caitlin put down her pen and pulled her chair around to sit in front of him. "You didn't tell anyone about me. I appreciate that and I know that secrets are sometimes necessary, but I also know that when I am ready to tell them, they'll support me. Since you arrived, you've helped us without any reason to. I haven't seen Barry this happy in a while. You're part of the team now, if you want to be. So, anything you want to tell me, I'll listen. If you want to tell me, but not the rest of the team, that's fine. Doctor patient confidentiality." 

Len looked up at Caitlin and blinked a few times. He'd never met a person other then Mick and Lisa who would straight up keep a secret for him, no questions or bribes asked, in either universe.

"Thank you." he looked down at his hands, then glanced up at her again. "I saw things."

She nodded.

"I saw... possibilities. Past and future. More than what I've been seeing up to now." 

She nodded again. "It started like that for Cisco. He can probably help you aim the visions if you think that would be helpful."

"No, I--" Len stopped himself. "I don't think it works like that. I'm not a metahuman, or I wasn't before." The Captain hadn't said the spear changed him like that but...

"You're still not. I checked when you didn't wake up. Wally is though."

"Yeah, speedster, he'll wake up in a few weeks." Len leaned back rolling his shoulders. He was still trying to work through all the implications. He needed to figure out how all the details fit together. The Captain may have given him the broad strokes, but not how he got there.

Caitlin had gone still, "Is that... something you saw?"

"No, well, sort of. Alchemy told me. He's not our enemy."

"He's killing people." The temperature in the room dropped several degrees as Caitlin clenched her hands in her lap.

Len looked at her, and made a choice. He needed an ally and Barry couldn't keep a secret to save his life if his identity was anything to go by. 

"It's not him. There's someone else, Savitar. I don't know much yet, and there are other factors, but he's the one killing people."

She bit her lip, "You saw it?"

He shrugged.

"Can you-- Is there proof?"

"Not yet, but there will be. Will you trust me?" 

Caitlin sighed and nodded, "I suppose you don't want me to tell anyone?"

"Best to keep the circle small for now," he agreed.

"Okay, is there anything else?" She smiled as if she knew she was asking for trouble, but had to anyway.

"oh, nothing big, just an alien invasion."

 

<><><>

 

"Aliens?!" Flash said when they'd called everyone in that afternoon. 

Cisco was in his usual swivel chair behind the console, keeping an eye on Wally on the monitors. Caitlin was behind Len's left shoulder, a supporting presence that oddly reminded him of his sister. Joe West had his arms crossed, standing to one side. Barry as always was the most active. He hadn't started pacing yet, but he was practically vibrating, bouncing on his heels.

"Wait, what kind of Aliens? Because Supergirl -- did I tell you about Supergirl? Supergirl was great, and I know she's worked with others. I think there was a martian. I wonder if there are martians in this universe."

"Dominators." Len said over Barry's monologue.

"Dominators. I don't know them. Do we know about them?" Barry turned to Cisco who was already typing.

"Huh, apparently we do? Except everything's redacted, or classified. Looks like Argus."

"Okay," Barry was nodding, "We call up Dig and see what he can get us then. Do you know how long we have?" The last was said to Len.

Len opened his mouth, then paused to consider. "Not, exactly, but I know you'll have enough time to call people in. More than a week. Probably more then two, but less than two months." The scale of the time map had been strange, but Len was pretty confident The Captain hadn't been talking about years.

Cisco nodded, "I'll get the satellites scanning for anything entering the galaxy." He looked up, and met Len's eyes with a smile, "Trek or Wars?" 

Len was caught off guard. "Why just one?" He said with a slow smile.

"Yes, movie night. I'll order pizza... after I call Dig." Barry tossed in, phone already in hand.

Detective West shrugged, "Well at least we've got some warning this time. I'm gonna check on Wally and fill in Iris." He clapped Len on the shoulder on his way out. "Thanks for telling me about my son."

Len nodded, and tried to reconcile that Joe West thanking him was stranger than an imminent alien invasion.

He glanced at Caitlin. She was wearing a small smile.

"I have zero proof and just got over a head injury. More then that I have a history of hallucinations, and not one of you said the aliens weren't real." He wasn't quite sure how to ask if they were insane or if this was just par for the course for them now.

She shrugged, "We trust you, and better safe than sorry. Besides I think Cisco has some kind of trope bingo card going."

Len snorted a laugh, then he thought of something. "You'll sign off that I was in a coma so I don't lose my job right? I'm fairly certain I'm out of sick days."

"Sure, not a problem."

Flash zipped up in front of them. "Digg's going to ask Lyla for the Dominator info, so what kind of pizza do you like?"

Caitlin waved off, "no thanks, I've got things piling up at home. You have fun."

Barry looked at Len, his smile hadn't faded. It made Len's heart patter, and a few other words from the dream came back. Len glanced around, Everyone else had wandered off. Barry tilted his head slightly, raising an eyebrow.  He was standing closer then he should have, closer then common courtesy. Len licked his lips.

"If I'm off base here..." he trailed off. 

Barry was shaking his head, "If there isn't an alien invasion then no harm done. We're not going to kick you out for crying wolf or something. You're part of the team now." Barry squeezed his shoulder.

That hadn't been what he meant, but Len let the contact derail his protest. He hadn't realized how warm Barry would be. Len took a breath, nodded to himself, and like the thief he was, he took what he wanted. 

Barry was close enough that all he had to do was lean in to meet his lips. It was just a light press at first, then Barry squeezed his shoulder tighter, stepping in to press against him in a line from chest to thigh. Len's hands came up, finding Barry's hips and holding him close as his tongue traced just inside the other man's mouth. Barry tilted his head slightly and opened for him. Len let the sensations wash over him, Barry's heat, the firm strength of him.

Then a cry came from the doorway and they broke apart. Len felt the heat of a blush, and covered his mouth as he turned. Cisco was standing in the doorway, a hand over his eyes.

"I'm happy you guys finally figured that out, but give a guy some warning."

Barry rubbed at the back of his neck, and glanced at Len. He was blushing too. "Ah, yeah, sorry Cisco."

The mechanic peeked through his fingers, then dropped his hand when he saw nothing illicit. Instead he crossed his arms, "So should I call off movie night so you two can go do things I am definitely not going to think about?"

Len thought about how Barry had pressed against him. How he'd been seconds from slipping his hands under his shirt and exploring skin. It had been a long time since he'd been a teenager, but Len's pants were uncomfortably tight in that moment.

"No Cisco, we umm..." Barry trailed off. He was biting his lip as he glanced at Len.

"We should talk." Len offered the lifeline.

"Yeah," The tension in Barry's shoulders eased. "Definitely."

"You were ordering pizza?" Len prompted.

"Oh, yeah, toppings, I was asking you about toppings." 

In the doorway, Cisco glanced skyword, and shook his head. His voice echoed from the hallway as he left, "I'll set up the screen."  

"No Anchovies,  no pineapple." Len provided. "other then that, I'm easy." 

Barry's face went a shade or two darker. His mouth opened, then closed as he swallowed. His eyes went a little glassy, "okay, yeah."

Len privately smiled. This was going better than he'd hoped. 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

 

Returning to an office job after the past few weeks was the most torturous thing Len had ever experienced. 

He spent most of the morning playing catch up and apologising to the higher ups for the sudden absence. He was able to placate a few of them with hints of a STAR labs contract. He hadn't actually talked to Barry about it, but they did need to fix that spire; it was probably causing all kinds of rust and dry rot.

He took lunch at his desk, reading through new project specs between bites of sandwich.  He kept an ear out the whole time, but there were no more whispers then normal. He didn't sense anyone watching him. It seemed impossible that no one would have realized he was the new "ice man" who had robbed a bank a week ago. He'd have to talk to someone about getting his name right. By the end of the day he had a fair idea of what needed to be done in the office, even if it would take him a while. It was only as he was walking out that he saw the missed text from Barry.

_ Are you free?  _

They hadn't talked the night before. They'd watched movies, complained about the bad CGI and plot holes you could sail the Waverider through, then Barry had raced him home. Barry had blushed as he stood on his doorstep and asked to kiss him goodnight. It was one of the more surreal experiences Len had ever had, and that was saying something. Definitely a good experience, but surreal. 

_ just got off work --  _ Len texted back. He looked at the screen for a minute, just standing there on the sidewalk. Then he forced himself to put it away. He wasn't some teenager with a crush, despite what the tight little flutter in his chest would have him believe.

He heard the crackle over the sound of traffic, and looked up just as the crowd gasped. The Flash's blur of yellow lightning zoomed past, dodging between traffic. Len didn't bother trying to hold back the smile. A second later he was moving, his head tucked into Barry's neck, red leather under his hands, and pressed firmly against his chest. Len's breath caught. Lightning tingled over his skin. Then it was over.

Len found himself standing on the waterfront. There was a row of little shops stretching out in one direction and the slowly illuminating lights of a city behind them. He checked the skyline.

"Is this Starling?"

Barry nodded. "Star City, yeah." Len noted that Barry was back in civilian clothing, jeans and a button up with the sleeves pushed past his elbows. His hair was mussed from the run or the cowl. A traitorous little though noted that Barry looked good enough to unwrap right there. Len clenched a fist in an attempt to redirect the blood headed south.

"And why are we in Star City?"

"Because there's a nice little seafood-pasta place that I thought you might like?" Barry stuffed his hands in his pockets and ducked his head, looking at Len through his lashes.

There was no way Len could say no to him. Besides, unexpected travel aside, no one would know who they were here, and with the Arrow keeping watch Barry would be less likely to run off at the first hint of a siren.

"Alright, but we're going the rest of the way at my speed."

Barry's face lit up with a smile the sun would have been jealous of. He offered his arm. Len tried to look skeptical, but he knew there was a smile on his face. He took the offered arm and let himself be lead down the pier. 

"So is this where we talk about first date things?"

Barry shrugged, "I've umm, never actually been good at first dates. I was always awkward and it didn't help that I was in love with Iris for basically ever."

Len nodded, "Was?"

Barry glanced at him, "Well, after I got my powers everything changed, and she was engaged to Eddie... You showed up, and well. I guess this time travel thing was the last straw. I wish I could remember what happened in this new timeline. I still want to be her friend, but I know nothing else is going to happen."

"I think I can live with that."

"Jealous?"

Len shrugged, "I have been known to be from time to time. Lisa's boyfriends never had much of a chance, and well, that's part of the reason me and Mick didn't work out."

Barry nodded and they walked for a bit in silence before the hero laughed awkwardly, "I have no idea what to talk about," He admitted. "I keep thinking about Flash stuff, but I don't know if that's cheating or not."

"Well, considering my criminal nature, cheating isn't necessarily a bad thing. Though if we're going to talk shop I should mention that I told my bosses I was talking to you about repairing the spire back at S.T.A.R. labs."

"Oh, yeah..." Barry said slowly. "I keep forgetting I technically own the building."

"I'd recommend working on the security while you're at it."

Barry pulled Len to a stop, wrapping his arms around the other man's waist, "but then you wouldn't have been able to stroll in and light up my life."

"No, instead I'd have to sneak in and steal your heart."

Barry's head fell back as he laughed, letting Len eye the line of his neck with a low hum of pleasure. 

"Cisco would be groaning so hard right now."

"To be fair so would Lisa and Mick. They never did fully appreciate my sense of humor."

"Speaking of, are you going to properly introduce me to the new Mick?"

"If you'd like. He doesn't seem to be interested in the hero game but was interested when I first said I knew the Flash. Or did you mean you as my new boyfriend Barry?"

Barry shrugged, his hands slid down until he was only holding one of Len's hands. He squeezed it, turning to look out at the water. "I don't know. I haven't had a real relationship since I got my powers. I was always hiding. I--" He looked back at Len, "I'm really glad I don't have to hide with you."

"Me too, Scarlet." Len tugged lightly on Barry's hand until he stepped forward. He cupped Barry's cheek with his other hand and tilted his head for a soft kiss.  The pier wasn't exactly crowded but there were still too many people for anything elaborate or lingering. Their anonymity would only go so far to protect them.

Barry licked his lips as he drew back. "Just to be clear, you're not a wait until the third date kind of guy are you?"

"Even if I was, I think our tet-a-tets would qualify."

"Yeah, good. Just wanted to make sure."

Len let himself smile. A part of him was all for skipping dinner and heading back to his apartment to continue along that vein but he'd picked up a few things while hanging out with the hero. One of those things was how much Barry needed to eat. It would kind of ruin the mood if Len had to call Caitlin because Barry passed out in the middle of things.

"So dinner?" he said instead.

Barry nodded, and started walking again.

The restaurant was an old fashioned place with red and white plaid tablecloths. It wasn't romantic so much as comfortable. The place wasn't packed, but there were a few families scattered throughout the place. 

"is this okay?" Barry asked as they waited to be seated. "We can go somewhere else if..."

"No, this is fine. I--" he stopped as his phone rang. he glanced at the name, "Hang on, I should take this." then into the phone, "Piper, Everything okay?"

"Well, nothing has exploded if that's what you're asking. Are you free?"

Len glanced at Barry. He didn't want to leave, but everything he knew about Piper said he wouldn't have called without a good reason. "If it's urgent."

"Golden Glider wants to meet with you."

Len's heart stopped at the words.

Lisa.

He didn't want to leave Barry hanging. Didn't want to abandon him. But if there was one thing that cold get him back to Central no questions asked it was his sister.

"I'll meet with her. Does it have to be tonight?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Len heard more distant conversation. A feminine voice that Len knew in his bones. Barry grabbed Len's free hand and offered a small supporting smile. Eventually Piper spoke again.

"Tonight would be best."

Len let out a slow breath, "Where?"

The answer came immediately, an address on east Pine that Len could vaguely place. He'd had a safehouse near there for a while, even if he was fairly sure that exact address was a restaurant, or maybe a cafe.

"One moment." Len tugged Barry away from the restaurant, out onto the boardwalk and down a bit until he found a quiet spot where they'd have the illusion of privacy. "It's Lisa, she wants to meet with me."

Barry's eyes widened in surprise, and he nodded. "You've got to see her then."

"You don't mind me running out on you?" Len didn't particularly want to hear the answer, but he had to ask.

Barry leaned in, bumping his shoulder, "After all the times I've run out on people? Trust me, Flash stuff will definitely interrupt a few future dates." Barry studied his face for a minute, "Do you want backup?"

Len considered it, then shook his head, "I think you being there will be do harm than good."

Barry's face turned sour, "Yeah, you may be right." He took a breath, and seemed to steady himself, "Back to Central then?"

Len turned back to the phone, "I'll be there in forty."

Piper acknowledged him, and hung up.

"You know it won't take forty minutes for me to get us back to Central right?" Barry asked with a smile that belonged to the Flash.

"No," Len agreed, "but I want to pick up the cold gun, and I'm not letting you drop me off."

"Trying to keep your Rogues meeting secret?"

"Something like that."

Barry leaned in and kissed Len, just a light peck. It was over before Len could properly react. "Okay. You're lucky it's your sister or I might get jealous."

Len spared a thought for what a jealous and possessive Barry Allen might do, and didn't try to hide the shiver it caused.

"Ready?" Barry asked.

Len took a breath, and nodded. Once again the world blurred around them, lightning tingling over his skin. 

Len caught his breath and looked around, recognising the back of his apartment building. Barry stood, shifting from foot to foot, an arms reach away. He was back in the full Flash gear, but the cowl was pulled down. Len was quietly grateful that his neighbors all kept to themselves.

"Call me? I mean, I totally want you to call me whenever, but call me tonight? So I know you're okay?"

Len nodded, then on impulse, reached out. He caught the front of Barry's uniform and pulled him in until they were flush from chest to thigh. The kiss was a tease, just deep enough to show how good it could be. It took an effort of will to pull away. 

"Next time," Len promised. 

Barry's eyes were glinting, "Trust me, you're not getting away again, no matter what excuse you use.

Quips about cuffs flitted though Len's mind but if he let himself go down that path he'd be late for Lisa. "Next time," he repeated.

They reluctantly separated, and in a burst of energy, Flash was gone.

  
  



	17. Chapter 17

 

Len took the time to grab his gear from his apartment, before heading to the meeting spot.

Like he'd remembered the address belonged to a little coffee shop. The kind of hipster place that had a stage for poetry readings and catered to the college crowd during exam season. Tonight had neither of those, in fact the pace looked closed from the outside except for a patch of light from a back room.

Len drove past, parked his bike on the next block and circled back on foot. The street was mostly empty but Len still tried to act casual as he knocked. Piper was the one to answer. The younger man nodded as he gestured Len inside and locked the door behind him. That made Len pause. It wasn't like he couldn't break out if he needed to, but getting locked in didn't start things off on a good note.

"Piper?"

"No interruptions." he shrugged. "You okay with that?" He wasn’t meeting Len’s eye.

"I'd be more okay with it if Lisa hadn't threatened me the last time we saw each other."

Piper nodded, glancing towards the back. "You came though."

Len shrugged. Maybe his sister really did want to reconcile. The pessimist in him doubted it but it was possible. He gestured to Piper to lead on.

The back room looked like the kind of space the coffee shop would rent out for private events.  There was a central table that would seat six, chairs that didn’t look like they would break a person’s spine and non-offensive pictures on the cream colored walls. Len was confident that Lisa hadn't had a hand in putting it together. That meant that while Lisa obviously had enough influence to set up a meeting here, it wasn't actually a personal base.

The Leader of the Rogues was leaning against the table, her hair billowing out behind her despite the lack of wind. Len had almost managed to forget that his sister was a meta in this timeline, but her translucent glowing form quickly reminded him.

Len settled into a comfortable stance,hands by his sides, non threatening. He hadn't gotten a close look at Lisa last time what with the fight. Her power made it harder to tell the color of her skin, but she didn't look too thin and she had enough presence to knock a man on his ass.

"Lisa." he said with a nod. "It's good to see you again. I have to say I wasn't expecting your call."

"I wasn't planning on making it, but given the circumstances..." She crossed her arms.

For a moment he wondered how she'd learned about the imminent invasion, than he switched gears and realized his error. "Something wrong with the bank?" He looked to Piper, "You did give her the money right?"

Piper rolled his eyes with a nod, "Wouldn't be here otherwise." Len relaxed again, noting how Piper had moved to flank Lisa. That was a good sign. It meant they were comfortable around each other, quite a feat for less then two weeks.

"I'm not sure I see the problem than."

Lisa slowly stood, or floated, Len wouldn't have realized she was a few inches taller then she should have been if he wasn't so familiar with his sister. She used it to her advantage.

"Your foolish stunt has turned up the heat. We’re being targeted."

Len whinced. In another life those had been his people. Metas who were too scared to reveal their powers or too unstable to properly control them. Families who'd got caught up in the gang fights when Metas became the new big weapon. Families getting torn apart or turning on each other out of fear. In that other life Len had painted a target on his back. He'd called out the Flash and fought him to a standstill just to prove that he'd fight anyone who dared come after what was his. Presumably Lisa had done something similar in this timeline.

"I'm sorry about that. They shouldn’t have come after you, I'm not one of yours."

"They don't know that." Lisa snarled low and tense. "You didn't bother to stay and gloat or make a stand. No one knows who you are, but they know that you pulled off a heist that should have been too risky to consider. They know that less than an hour later the CCPD was bagging up evidence of all their crimes and they know that I have both the reputation, skill and plenty of metas who owe me a favor. At best you're a contractor no one's heard of. A wild card. At worst someone finds out you’re my brother and you've just declared war in my name." Throughout the whole rant her voice remained low and steady. She was furious, but it was the kind of tempered fury that could cut like a razer.

He nodded slowly. "So?"

She floated a little higher the ribbons on her costume and her hair lashing the air around her even as her face remained unmoved.

He held up a hand before she could do more then silently threaten. "You wouldn't have called me here just to tell me the obvious. If you want to make a deal, let's hear it. What’s the plan?"

“No retaliation, in exchange for your help.” It sounded like it killed her to say it. She wrapped her arms around herself, gritting her teeth and refusing to look at him.

“Anything,” Len said without hesitation.

Lisa glanced over at Piper and nodded. Piper drew a flute from a holster along his thigh and raised it.

Len realized what he was about to do a second before he took a breath. “Wait,” Len said, fishing in his pocket for his phone. Lisa was scowling so he spoke fast. “I got into a mess a few weeks back. If I got kidnapped again I’d never hear the end of it, even if I actually went willingly. Let me just…”

Len found Barry’s number.

 _I’m fine. Helping Lisa with a Rogues problem, I’ll check in soon,_  he typed. Len hesitated, considered adding ‘I love you’ then shook his head and hit send. Shutting the phone off, he turned it over and removed the battery.

Len nodded, looking back at Piper. The first few notes of the song were gentle. Len didn’t fight it as the melody lured him to sleep.

 

<><><>

 

“I am so sorry, I had to take that. There's only so many times you can tell the president of the United States that you'll call him back.”  
Thon gestured with his phone as he descended the pair of steps from his lab.  Len was seathing internally. The man was a pompous ass. He'd called them in, then made them wait just to prove he could. 

The part of Len that knew he was dreaming sighed internally and once again lamented how foolish his younger self had been. Lenny was putting on a good act but his attention was too focused on Thon. Len had barely had a chance to take in the exits or Mick, or the lab they were now in. It almost looked like star labs, except the spaces claimed by the heroes he knew had been filled with machines and sci-fi model spaceships. Len couldn't figure out if it was more like a kid taking over the house while his parents were away, or if it was a deliberate snub, rubbing it in the faces of people who wouldn't remember the truth. 

"You want to get to the point?" Lenny said. There was enough courtesy to maintain civility, but only barely. 

Thon answered almost before he'd finished. He wasn't even trying to hide that he was a speedster. "Yes, I brought you here to discuss a sensitive matter, and it goes by the name of Malcolm Merlyn."

"What about him." Lenny drawled. He drew out the words just slightly, seeing how far he could push.

"I want you to keep an eye on him."

Mick answered before Lenny could, "We're not your watch dogs." Through the dream, Len winced. Mick's voice was dead. The protest that should have been a growl, or a snarl, came out as just words, like Mick was thinking about something else. Like he was just going through the motions. Len could piece together what had happened and he didn't like it. If the Legion of doom had won... If this was a possible future or past where they'd managed to get the spear then Len didn't know how he was going to stop it. Mick being miserable was just the cherry on top.

"What was that?" Thon was still smiling, but there was an edge behind his words.

Lenny stepped in to smooth things over, "What he means is we're not spies, we're thieves."

Before Thon could retort there was a commotion from the hall. A man ran in pursued by security who tackled him to the floor. They started to escort him out but he was babbling about the timeline. The Len in the dream purred, watching with glee as Thon tried to stay in control. He really was a terrible actor to anyone who bothered to pay attention. 

Len considered the man, gleaning what he could from flashes of Lenny's memories. His name was Nate. He had joined the crew after Len had died. He had some kind of metal power but that would have been removed when the Legion changed things. Somehow, without his powers or his memories he was still trying to save the world.

In Len's opinion, Thon really needed to take a good long look at the evil overlord list. 

When Nate started praising Thon, the speedster openly preened. Lenny resisted rolling his eyes.

"You know what? I think you're onto something." Thon said. 

Nate made a little 'ah you see' sound.

"Something is definitely not right here." Thon pointed at Lenny. "Fix it. Take Mr.--"

"Heywood." Nate supplied.

"Mr. Heywood. Take Mr. Heywood out for some fresh air, and ah, kill him."

As much as Lenny hated being ordered around, he didn't hesitate. The cold gun was out and charged before Nate could change gears. Just because he didn't have his powers didn't mean he was going to underestimate Nate. Someone had to be a professional after all. Lenny gestured for Nate to put his hands up, glancing at Mick as they headed for the door. Mick was slower to draw but didn't hesitate to point the heat gun at Mr. Heywood.

Internally Len was shocked at his younger self. He hadn't been paying attention to Mick earlier but there were plenty of signs that Mick wasn't happy with the situation and he was ignoring all of them. Mick had spoken up during Nate's explanation. He'd looked the other man in the eye. Before Nate had come in Mick hadn't been present, barely engaged. Now as Lenny hustled Nate into the backseat of a car, covering him from the passenger seat, Mick was as focused on his own thoughts as he was on the road.

Mick might have betrayed the Legends but whatever he'd been promised, wasn't enough. He was still considering his options.

They drove in near silence for close to an hour until Mick found a spot he liked. It was dark by then, mist seeping up from a little river. Nate started babbling as Lenny hauled him out of the car and started him walking down the old road.

"Guys I am not a threat to anyone, unless I'm right." Nate stopped, turning back to look at them, wide eyed, "Am I right?"

"Sounds like fitting final words to me." Lenny said, motioning for Nate to start walking again.

"Whatever signs of magic, altered reality, must have left small scars on my memory that my subconscious picked up on. So if I'm not a conspiracy theorist that no one listens to then... who am I?"

Lenny had no intention of answering. Instead he decided they were far enough from the main road. He charged his gun taking aim. "Dead."

"Wait."

There was an odd disconnect as Len's present and past emotions contradicted each other. Lenny was surprised, angry, frustrated; Len was fiercely victorious. 

"What?"

"He said wait, I heard him. He said wait." Nate babbled desperately.

Lenny considered icing him just to get rid of the annoying chatter but unfortunately Nate was right.  
  
"You promised me things were going to be like old times."

"It is like old times, only better. Central city is ours, no more Flash." Not that Lenny even remembered the Flash. They hadn't met yet. Wouldn't for a few years. Lenny was scrambling, bullshitting with the best of them. He hadn't expected Mick of all people to call him on it.

"Except another speedster is calling the shots." Mick said right on cue. 

"Leave Thon to me. I always have a plan, you know this." 

"Well fill me in." Mick made an open gesture, and through the dream, Len wanted to kiss him. 

Mick was still there, buried deep under the grief and self-loathing, under all the insults and betrayal; his Mick, his partner. The spark was back behind his eyes, and Lenny was about to learn a hard lesson.

"When the time is right." Lenny's voice was consoling, condescending, still trying to brush it off.

"Ah yes, we're partners. Except when you refuse to tell me what's going on." Mick was ignoring Nate, fully focused on Lenny.

Nate noticed and took a step back. Lenny charged his gun.

The blast of fire super-heated the air bare inches in front of him. Lenny pulled back, stumbled, and managed to get back to his feet.

"You son of a--"

Lenny's curse was cut off as Mick punched him out.  
  
  
<><><>  
  


Len blinked awake to sunlight and had to reorient from the too vivid memory-dream. He'd been talking with Lisa. He'd agreed to help her. Piper had put him to sleep. Len had expected to wake up in one of the Rogue's hideouts, instead he was sitting in a wheelchair by a large bay window. Soft morning sun angled in from some kind of courtyard. There were a few benches with elderly people settled on them, and nurses making the rounds. The room he was in was small, just a bed with a small sleeping woman, a table fit for one, and space for his chair. There were watercolor landscapes on the walls.

Len stood slowly, wondering where Piper and Lisa had gotten to, and where he'd been brought. The door was unlocked, and opened onto a day room. It was some kind of elder care facility. There was a large TV on one wall, playing the news with the subtitles on. A group of old women played cards at a table. More nurses went about their work. Piper and Lisa were nowhere to be seen.

Len turned back to the room, prepared to look for a note, when he noticed the name plate on the door: Lisa Holloway. Holloway had been her mother's maiden name.

Len found his eyes pulled to the figure in the bed. It was Lisa. She looked smaller then she should, his skin sallow and her hair dull, especially compared to her meta form. But now that he was paying attention it was definitely her. A hundred questions and worries flooded his mind and he didn't have the words for any of them.

"You look like you need coffee," Piper said from the doorway. He was holding two small styrofoam cups in one hand and a full coffeepot in the other.

Len relaxed a fraction, nodding. He was wide awake but having something to do with his hands would be welcome.

"Lisa, is she...?"

"Business, she said she'd be back around noon, or call."

Len took the offered cup. The coffee didn't smell like anything special but at least it was fresh.

"and is she...?" Len nodded at the bed.

"Yeah," Piper trailed off, looking down at his cup. "She thought I might be able to help since I worked at STAR labs but it isn't exactly my spechialty."

"So it's because of her powers?"

Piper nodded, "A side effect or something. She's a ghost and in the meantime her body is in a coma. Another of the Rogues," Piper hesitated, glanced at Len, and then obviously skipped over the name, "they were training as a nurse. They did a lot. tried everything they could think of before they brought me in. That's why we need you. Blood relative, you can provide a baseline."

"This isn't quite what I pictured when she said she needed my help...  I'll happily donate to the cause, but I'm only a half-sibling. I'm not sure how much good it'll do." Len trailed off.

"Well it's not like I'm swimming in options." 

Len turned, nodding as Lisa floated through the door and swept around them to hover over her own body.

"I killed dear old dad a few months before the explosion so you're all I've got." she said without looking at him. Len whinced. He knew Lisa had had it harder without him, but he'd never wanted to put that on her. 

Piper cleared his throat, "The families?"

Lisa snarled, "They took 14th street. The restaurant, the garage, all of it. Then they threw it in my face. I had to put out a warning to everyone living east of the greenhill apartments."

"They really are coming down on you," Len said. Not that he'd doubted her, but he knew so little about the underworld in this timeline, it was disconcerting.

"Thanks to you."

Len sighed, "You know I'll do whatever I can to fix it, including this." he waved at both of her forms, "For instance, have you considered asking Snow for help?" He directed his question more at Piper but it was Lisa who shook her head.

"The Flash's little tag-along? So she can stick me in one of their cells? I don't think so."

Len held up his hands, fingers spread, "I only suggested it because she's been quite helpful in my own predicament, and she's been willing to keep secrets for me, even from the Flash."

Piper made a surprised choking sound, "Are we talking about the same Caitlin Snow?"

"Doctor patient confidentiality," Len confirmed.

"The answer's still no." Lisa said, but she was biting her lip, hesitating. Len made a mental note to bring it back up if the bloodwork came back without results. 

There was a minute of tense awkward silence before Piper cleared his throat. "Well, I'll go get a nurse to draw that blood." Except when Piper got the the door he froze. Len casually took note, following Piper's gaze to the television in the day room. It was too far away to get the details but as they watched someone turned up the sound.

"-- appears to be a spaceship." A young blond was saying. She was standing in front of something metal with the river in the background. "So far the CCPD have sealed off the scene and are asking for citizens to remain calm. Experts say there is no sign of contamination but are otherwise quiet about the potential interplanetary visitors. More on this as it develops, back to you Tom."

A rushing in Len's ears blocked out anything else that might have been said. 

The Dominators had arrived.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys sorry for the wait. This chapter was tough to write. Lisa did not want to tell me what she was up to. :)


	18. Chapter 18

Len had planned for this. Len had a dozen plans for this, no matter what his possible future self had predicted. None of those plans involved Piper, Lisa, or Lisa's comatose body.

He took a deep breath, then stepped forward to shut the door. Piper and Lisa each gave him puzzled looks.

"I need you both to listen to me because we just ran out of time. The ship that they're talking about belongs to a race called the Dominators. As I speak the Flash will be assembling heroes to fight a full on invasion."

Lisa crossed her arms, "So? Let the heroes handle it then. That's what they're there for right?"

"So, they might not be enough." Len took a breath and forced his voice to remain steady. "You know I have memories from another timeline, well I also have knowledge of a few possible futures. There are a number of events in the next few months that could either destroy life as we know it or change it so radically that it might as well have been destroyed. This is the first one."

Lisa thrust out her chin in a move Len knew from when she'd been little. It was her 'I'm going to get may way even if I'm wrong' pout. "Still doesn't sound like my problem."

Len rubbed at his eyes, "Fine how about, the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Or maybe stick with the devil you know? You have a deal with the Flash right? Leverage on him? You don't have anything on the dominators. Plus if you help he'll owe you one." He met her eyes and spoke in a soft coaxing voice he'd only ever used on her. "You don't have to help if you don't want to but don't you want to come along just to know what's happening?"

She hesitated, "Fine, but I'm not doing this for you."

Len nodded, "of course not." It only took a moment patting down his pockets to find his goggles., slipping them on he switched on the coms.

"--Supergirl. Are we missing anyone?" Flash asked in his things are serious voice.

"Scarlet?"

"Len? Are you okay? Did you see, of course you did. Everyone's gathering in the hanger."

"Fine, I'm looping in Lisa and Piper, we're headed to Star Labs." 

"Right your thing with the Legends. They all look good if it helps. You're going to have to tell me how Mick is here if he's also a civilian..."

"Later," Len assured him. "I'm going radio silent, good luck."

"Thanks." Flash said, before his voice changed to the broader tone that meant he was talking to people who were actually in the room with him.

Len refocused on Lisa nd Piper. They'd heard his half of the conversation but he repeated it himself anyway, "We need to get to Star Labs. We'll have full access to the coms there."

Lisa was grinning, "Full access to the Flash coms? Maybe coming along isn't such a bad idea after all."

 

 

Len rode shotgun back into the city, but he was paying more attention to what he was hearing then to where they were going to or coming from. As he Listened Flash introduced Team Arrow and the Legends to Supergirl. Apparently there were a few stragglers, the current Vixen, and the Hawks had volunteered to pick up Katana who was flying in from overseas. Not wasting any time Supergirl told the group what the Dominators had done on her home planet. Then Cisco laid out what had happened the night before.

The ship had first crashed only an hour after Len had called off their date. 

Len was retroactively pleased, since that meant their date was going to get canceled anyway.

Flash had been on the scene moments later, but he had been overrun. The Dominators were strong, tough and twice as fast as the average human, plus there had been about two dozen of them. There hadn't been a lot that flash could do. Luckily thanks to Len's warning they had prepared for that.

Cisco had sent out the call, Argus had been alerted, and Flash had managed to plant a few trackers before the dominators escaped. The heroes were now arguing the merits of going in hard and fast, waiting to clear civilians from a wider area, and trying to get more intelligence. Len thought they were all lacking in intelligence, not that he could say as much.

They had just reached the labs and Len had pulled up the coms on the main monitor when a new argument broke out.

"You're not going to tell them?" Sisco accused. Flash hesitated then let out a breath. 

In the distance someone without a mic asked, "Tell us what?" Lisa hummed in agreement. Both her and Piper had their attention fixed on the screen. Len was only half listening, the rest of his attention was trying to get video. He knew there was a camera in the Flash suit if he could just find the right program. 

"Jax and the professor on the waverider," Flash said.

Len got the video up in time to see Sara turn to Proffesser Stine. "You found a message?" She asked. 

Len realized that Flash must have been standing as the focus of a semicircle. Most of the heroes were standing nearby, looking at him and now at Sara and Stine. They were in an open high ceilinged room, that was more finished then the warehouses that Len was used to. Flash had mentioned a hall or something... 

"We found an extra compartment. There was a message for Rip." Stine gestured to himself and Jax then away.

Sara took a breath, looked down then back up, her gaze trailing from Stine back to the camera, back to Flash. "What's the message?"

Flash turned and Len caught a glimpse of Cisco and Caitlin along with a few others not in uniforms. There was a wave of a red glove and a blond woman hit a button on a laptop. The message was strangely echoed coming through Cisco's mic and Flash's and that was on top of the reverberation inherent in the voice. It was a speedster.

"Captain Hunter, If you get this, then you need to know what's coming. The Dominators were only the start. I'm going to try to change it. I know that goes against your code. I also know what you've lost and what you tried to do to fix it. If you try to stop me from doing the same, well, I'll do what I have to, even if it means fighting you too." The message cut out in a crackle of electricity.

Len slumped back in his chair. Lisa glanced at Piper and shrugged. On the screen some of the heros were doing the same, others were glancing at the legends. Len wished Flash wasn't wearing the camera, that he could see his face. Flash might realize the implications, but no one else would, no one but Len.

This was the same thing the Captain had warned him about. Savitar. The Legion of doom. 

Len took a breath and let it out slowly, his mind racing. On the screen the heros were arguing over what to do next. Someone called for a vote. 

He tuned back in in time to hear Flash ask, "All in favor?"

"What are they voting for?" Len asked the room at large.

"If they're going to go attack the aliens now, or wait." Piper supplied. 

A lot of hands went up.

"Okay," Flash said, "let's go." 

The group of heroes turned and headed for the door.

"Well as interesting as this is, it doesn't seem like they'll be needing our help," Lisa said.

Len bit his lip. Maybe she was right, but Len didn't think so. If it was that easy then it wouldn't have been on the list the Captain gave him.

"Don't jinx it." Len said. His words pulled Piper and Lisa's attention back to the screen. 

Flash was talking to Supergirl as the other's headed out. They wouldn't have any trouble catching up.

"Fine," Lisa waved a magnanimous hand. "but order a pizza or something. This better be entertaining at least."

The fight was more frustrating than entertaining. While there the camera built into the Flash emblem was the best that Cisco could design, the people viewing the footage were still only human, or metahuman as the case may be. Flashes of color blurred together, twisting into unrecognisable shapes until Len paused the feed. The sudden still frame of Supergirl's cape and a warehouse wall wasn't any more informative than the blur. Len tapped the enter key to start and stop the video but even the sequence of stills felt like he was viewing things on fast forward.

Flash was racing down the road, a large warehouse blurring on his left. 

Another shot of what might have been the same warehouse, but from a vastly different angle.

Green Arrow getting off a motorcycle, scowling.

another shot of Supergirl hovering against a blue sky, and glaring at something out of frame. 

Flash running down an ally, concrete walls on either side.

Other heroes, Sara, and Firestorm, and the Girl from Team Arrow in red.

A set of doors and darkness beyond.

Len could only guess that they had found the dominators and scoped out the location. There wasn't enough information to guess at their plan of attack. Nothing coming in through audio was particularly helpful. It was as jumbled as the images were. It sounded like the tech support members of the team had linked together the coms for the different teams, but Len still only had access to the Flash, and Barry wasn't saying much.

The next three shots were blurry messes of dark shapes. Then Len hit the button and got a single clear image of a spiky glowing alien device.

"What is that?" Piper asked stepping forward to take a closer look at the screen.

Len had no idea, and started to say as much. His fingers came down on the button again, a self perpetuating pattern, except the image didn't change. Len swallowed, hitting the button again, this time intentionally. The device was still there. Barry had stopped running, just staring at it. Was he talking with the other heroes? Was there something out of fraim? Len's hands hovered over the keyboard trying to remember what program would connect him to Cisco's remote station.

"Barry?" Cisco's voice, slightly desperate. The name echoed through the room, broadcast through the Flash coms. Len quickly put aside the instant irritation at the disregard for Flash's secret identity. 

"I'm not seeing movement, What's the situation?" Len snapped. He hit the button. The same device was still front and center, but now there was a tall dark shape behind it.

Cisco was ignoring him, spouting technobabble at someone on his end.

Len hit the button.

A new figure stood behind the device. Either the perspective was off or the being was overly tall, limbs stretched until they looked just slightly wrong. It's head almost looked like a balloon. 

He hit the button silently praying that Flash would have moved, gotten out of there, punched it, something.

The dominator had stepped into the light. It's skin was a sickly yellow, it's mouth was overly large and full of razor teeth, and the large red circle on its head was glowing from within.

He hit the button.

The dominator had raised a hand, some kind of device wrapped around it's claw like fingers. 

The next time Len hit the button the screen had gone back.

Lisa and Piper turned to look at him. Cisco was still talking in the background. Len recognised enough of his babbling to understand it wasn't just him. All of the heroes were offline, and unresponsive.

Len snarled a curse under his breath, and apparently that was finally enough for Cisco to clue in to his presence.

"Snart? What--?"

"I'm at the lab with Lisa and Piper. They've agreed to play backup. We've been watching the feed. Any idea what's happened?"

"All our cameras and coms are offline," Cisco confirmed what Len had already seen, "I'm still getting GPS on Flash and dwarf star readings from the ATOM suit put Ray in the same area. The satellites still got eyes on the warehouse and there's no sign of movement."

Len nodded, "how long until you can get the suit feeds back up?"

"Depends on what they're doing to block them? I don't know about the Arrow equipment but I just redid the circuitry in the flash suit and it works on a rotating frequency that--"

"Cisco--" Len cut him off, "How long?"

"I don't know!" he snapped back. Len could picture Cisco guestruing at the air or maybe running a hand through his hair.

Len kept his voice even, drawing on every bit of control he'd ever learned as Captain Cold "Come back to the labs, and send me a full list of everyone who was taken."

Cisco made a sound of confirmation, and started talking to someone named Felicity about packing things up. Len pulled his attention back to the forefront. 

"How many Rogues can you call in on short notice?" He asked Lisa.

"Depends on what I need them for?" She had her arms crossed. Her expression was somewhere between considering and sceptical. Well, that was fine. She could be sceptical of him all she liked as long as she agreed to play ball.

He gestured at the still black screen, "How about a rescue attempt?"

"Look fighting aliens is one thing, but if you really had led my team you'd know that more than half of them would be laughing at you right now."

"Play back those last few seconds." Piper interrupted before Len could come up with a properly witty and scathing response.

Len scowled but rewound the footage a few minutes and set it to play at one frame per second. Flash stopped in front of the device.  It glowed ominously. The camera shook, dropping to look at the floor as if Flash was bent double. A few seconds later Flash straightened again. The Dominator stepped forward.

"Freeze it." Piper said, and Len did. "There," He stepped forward pointing at a section of the device on the screen. "Can you enhance that?"

It took Len a minute to find the right command, but when he did he saw exactly what Piper was getting at. The chrome surface of the device was reflecting Flash's image, and his eyes were wrong. Instead of the clear blue, Barry's eyes glowed the same red as the device.

"That's not a reflection is it?" Lisa asked.

"No, I don't think so."  Piper turned to look at Len, "They've been hypnotised."

 


	19. Chapter 19

Cisco agreed to pull everyone back. It may have just been static on the frequency but Len thought he heard a tremor in the other man's voice. Not that Len blames him. Len hates giving up control, but even he wishes there was someone to pass the buck to now. 

There's a little voice in the back of his head reminding him that the Captain told him not to get involved. Except there's no way he's sitting this one out, not after Barry...

The greatest heros in the world have been hypnotised by an alien enemy. Flash, the Green Arrow, Supergirl, Spartan, Speedy, White Canary, Atom, Firestorm, and Heatwave... God Mick...

Mick isn't going to handle this well when they get him out of it. He's still on such shaky footing after the time masters, and with the team the way they are... Len had to get him back first though.

Katana, Kendra and Carter, along with the current Vixen, arrived with Cisco and the geeks. Len had been pacing, trying to come up with a plan, and hadn't done more than wave to acknowledge their arrival. Wally had wondered in a few minutes later. In a typical hero fashion, he'd woken up from his coma just in time to be useful. Caitlin gave him the run down along with the rest of the late heroes.

"Any changes?" Cisco asked. He'd been hammering away at his keyboard, shooting half sentences back and forth with Felicity,

Piper rolled his eyes, "since the last time you asked or since they managed to shut down your system?" The snide comments had been his only contribution since the discovery that the A-Team had been hypnotized. Not that Len could point fingers.

"I notice you haven't tried to get it working," Cisco snapped.

Len lifted a hand, "All rivalries are suspended until the aliens are gone."

They turned their glares in his direction.

Len pointed at Piper, "You owe me," and then at Cisco, "You need me. Until this is over both of you can stow it and put your genius to work. What are they going to do with a team of hypnotized superheros?"

"Oh god you really are Leonard Snart." Kendra had her hands over her mouth, staring at him with wide eyes.

For a moment Len was torn between throwing up his hands in frustration and trying to strangle all of them until they helped him get Barry back. Then he took a slow breath and got himself under control.

"Yes, it's nice to see you again. Please don't spread it around, I'd like to tell people myself, in my own time. I'll explain the hows and whys later if you don't mind." Len turned back to the group of geniuses, "Now about my earlier question?"

"They haven't taken them anywhere." Cisco supplied, gesturing at the satellite view of the warehouse that was now up on the big monitor. "They've got local signals blocked but we can still get a read on anything..." he turned to Felicity.

"About a hundred yards out, I'm working on it." She supplied.

"And you're sure Flash or Supergirl can't slip past?"

Cisco snorted, "Dude, I know how to track speedsters."

Len had to give him that. 

Fine, just because they hadn't moved the heroes yet, didn't mean they wouldn't. The hero team still didn't know why the Dominators were there so Len couldn't do much to predict what they would try next. Waiting too long would mean reinforcements could arrive. Everyone had been filled in on the mysterious message and the potential for a second threat as well. Len was 90% sure the message was about Savitar; which meant it was a problem for later.

If it were him... well there were only so many options. The heroes would make good symbols for a public execution, but there had to be someone up there smart enough to know that the risk increased exponentially the longer they kept them alive. Then there was information, but what kind of information would require kidnapping these particular people rather than skimming the internet? It wasn't like Flash was the president and had a bunch of nuclear launch codes up his sleeves, and while offing the heroes would hit the civilian population hard it wouldn't interrupt the military chain of command... unless the Dominators didn't know that? No they had technology that could cross the stars and had spent enough time and effort to figure out English, Len couldn't assume they just didn't know.

"Snart."

Len turned, mentally bracing himself for more bad news. 

Alchemy stood in the doorway to the cortex. He had his hood up, but Len could see the white fire of Jax's eyes. As if from a great distance, Len heard one of the B-list heros ask who he was. Lisa said he wasn't with the Rogues. Wally gave his name with the same level of bafflement that Len was feeling.

"A word?" Alchemy nodded back to the hallway.

Fuck.

When this was done Len was going to sit down with Barry and have a serious conversation about upgrading security.

"Keep monitoring," Len snarled pointing at Cisco. Stalking forward he pulled Alchemy into the hall and down along it until they reached the not so hidden doorway to the white room.

He spun to face Alchemy and snarled, "If you're here to tell me I need to stay out of this, then you can shove it."

Firestorm blinked, "What? Na man listen. The timeline is fluctuating. It's Savitar."

Len rubbed at his eyes, "It never rains," he muttered, "What about Savitar?"

"Okay, so it's like--" Jax cut himself off, head tilted slightly to the side, "No, you're gonna have to explain this one."

Before Len could ask Jax split in the familiar cascade of sparks, except instead of the professor a woman appeared. She was shorter than Jax with short hair, and an old fashioned sweater-blouse, but her expression was as sharp as Len could ask for.

"You're not Stine," Len said completely derailed. 

"Actually I am. Lilly Stine. Martin was my father."

Len narrowed his eyes, "I wasn't aware the professor had kids."

"He didn't, but like you he interfered in his own timeline."

"Ah, so you were saying?" Len nodded and gestured for her to go on.

"You're going to need some context to understand. Jax told you that a future version of you sent us back in time right? What we didn't tell you is that in our future, everyone's dead. The planet is in chaos. The Legion of doom has three parts of the spear of destiny, and it amplifies their powers to crazy levels. There are whole countries where the natural laws don't work because of Dhark's magic. The League of assassins have soldiers who literally can't die thanks to Merlin. Thon is a force of nature, unbound from the timeline. You - well, the future you--"

"I've been calling him the Captain." Len said, nodding for her to get to it.

"Okay, well the Captain and the last of the heroes had the last part of the spear. When you use it it amplifies your connection to the temporal plain. You, he, was able to see what they were going to do to a certain extent. It's the only reason we lasted as long as we did. Even then there were only five of us left when the Captain sent us back."

Len did his best to take in the information. He didn't know how much time they had and while he trusted Jax, he didn't know Lily. He had to fight the urge to walk away and deal with everything she was saying later.

"Now in one of our earlier missions we were able to break their time-sphere. It drastically limited what Dhark and Merlin could do, but Thon is still free to travel the time-stream. Except like all speedsters he creates a wave of tachyon particles when he travels like that. When we came back in time we knew he could follow. We've been monitoring Savitar through those tachyon particles. Only all sign of those particles have vanished. Time hasn't solidified yet, but when it does, Savitar won't exist." She had her hands up, pleading.

"Basically, you've changed the timeline, If Savitar doesn't exist then neither does the Legion of doom."

So they were asking him to stay out of it, just with more reasoning behind it. Len breathed in slowly, then back out. There was one thing that was bugging him.

"Barry was one of those last heroes wasn't he?"

Lilly nodded. "You, him, The two of us, and Vixen. There was talk that the Hawks might reincarnate, but no one was sure."

The last piece fell into place.

"Barry is Savitar."

They both blinked at him in shock, and for a moment Len doubted himself, but the evidence was all there. "The message from the future, Barry said he'd lost everything. An evil speedster in the past, well I've dealt with that kind of thing before and there's no hiding. He wouldn't need to kill one person here or there, not if he's fully powered, especially not if he's  supercharged. But Barry coming back to try to save everyone? That sounds about right."

Jax's expression had gone all scrunched up like when he was frustrated with the professor. Lily's was doubtful.

"And the timeline changing, that makes sense too. There won't be any Barry left to come back in time if the Dominators kill him now."

"No Snart, look--" Lily started.

Len shut her down with a look. "You said yourself that your only proof is these tachyon trails and that any speedster could have made them."

"Why not tell us then?" Jax's voice was soft, "He could warn you. Even if he didn't want to mess with history, he could warn us."

"Except you've been hiding from him." Len pointed out.

"Man look, We came back because we were trying to change the future, this message you mentioned, it sounds like he was trying to do the same. If that's the case then talking to people is like the easiest way to do that."

Len decided he'd had enough. "It doesn't matter. I'm going to go back in there and do my very best to save Barry and the rest of those heroes. If you want to contribute, fine. Otherwise, we can continue this debate when and if any of us survive." He pushed between them heading for the door.

Jax grabbed his arm. Len pulled his gun and pointed it at Lily.

"You don't want to push me Jax, or have you forgotten that I'm not one of the good guys."

Lily slowly raised her hands. She stumbled back a half step putting more distance between herself and the gun, and coincidentally between her and Jax as well.

"You can't win this fight," Jax said.

"We did before."

"Only because in our timeline Barry never got himself captured. He was the one they wanted. Faster then light travel on an individual scale, time travel. Now that they have him, game over."

"How would they even know about Barry?" Len muttered mostly to himself.

"Look, I don't know man. I was hypnotized the first time around. You gonna shoot us or not?"

Len waited a beat, then took his finger off the trigger, and lifted the gun to point at the ceiling.

"I will get them back," Len said again. 

This time when he left they didn't try to stop him.

 

 

 

 

 

Len walked back into the cortex, and into a raging argument. Cisco and Piper were at each other's throats. Felicity was babbling, or possibly pleading in the direction of Katana. Caitlin and Lisa were glaring at each other. The rest of the group were standing around awkwardly.

Len considered firing his gun at the ceiling or something equally dramatic, but in the end decided to spare the architecture. He clapped his hands.

"Break it up," Len said at just under a yell, "You're professionals, act like it."

A sullen silence slowly settled over the room.

"Please say you have a plan?" Kendra asked with only a hint of desperation in her voice.

"Actually I do. Gather round and listen up." Some of them looked skeptical, but enough of them trusted him that they did as he said.  Len shared a quick smile with Kendra, Caitlin and Piper.

"The Dominators are here because of the metas specifically the Flash."

"How do you know?" Carter asked with his arms crossed. So far he'd been willing to follow Kendra's lead but he didn't seem all that happy about obeying a criminal. 

"Time travel, now as I was saying. They showed up because of the Flash. Now they have him. I'm not sure what they intend to do with him or the others, which means we have to move fast. Wally, that's where you come in."

Wally blinked and pointed to his chest, "What? Me?"

"You're a speedster now, or hadn't you noticed?"

He scratched at the back of his head, looking sheepishly around at the group, "Well, I was gonna ask Caitlin to check me out, but we kind of had other things..."

Len brushed it aside, "I'm sure she'd be happy to give you a check up later. Right now, Cisco is going to get you set up with one of the spare costumes and you're going to run as fast as you can."

Wally swallowed, then set his shoulders and nodded, "Where am I gonna go?"

"Nowhere, just around the building a bunch of times. The point is to get their attention. Speedsters give off radiation when they're going fast enough but I figure that doesn't happen all the time. If the Dominators were planning on capturing Barry from the start they have to have a way to track anyone going even close to that speed. Once they realize there's a second speedster I figure there's a one in three chance they send their captured heroes  to come capture you. That's where the rest of you come in."

Len turned scanning the group, and pointing to each of them in turn. "Kendra, Carter, Katana, Vixan, You're going to take point. Fight off any of the heroes who come looking, keep them off Wally and make sure they don't get hurt too badly in the process. Lisa, we'll need as many Rogues as you can call in to back them up."

Len met Lisa's gaze, "meanwhile you and I will be sneaking into that warehouse and disabling the device. If we're lucky that will snap everyone out of it and we can kick these invaders off our planet."

"If we're lucky?" Wally asked, drawing it out.

Len nodded, "like I said, one in three chance. If they don't send the heroes the next option is to come themselves. If that happens then you'll need to hit them as hard and fast as you can because Lisa and I will likely have to fight the hypno-heroes, and that's not something I'm looking forward to."

"Remind me why I'm going in with you, rather then leading my team?" Lisa asked, arms crossed.

"Family bonding time." Len said without any shame, "Also because your powers might be able to short out that machine. Plus if we can't break it we'll have to steel it, and the two of us are the best thieves in the city."

She considered that, then nodded, mollified.

"That leaves you lot," Len pointed at the geek squad, "I want you on the Waverider. I know it doesn't have any heavy artillery, but it's got a few weapons, and Gideon will be able to help you coordinate things."

Cisco and Felicity were already starry eyed at the idea of getting to see the time ship.

"What's the third option?" Katana said quietly.

Len nodded to her, "The third option is that they won't bother coming for Wally. If they think Barry can give them whatever they need, they may try to leave. If they try it then the plan goes out the window, Top priority becomes rescuing the hostages before they get off planet, but we should still be well positioned enough to handle it." He looked around, "any questions?"

There was a minute of silence where everyone looked at their friends and enemies, then they all get to work.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't intend for this chapter to be so much talking but that's how it came out. Shrug.


	20. Chapter 20

Len preferred to scope out a place before targeting it for a heist. In this case that wasn't an option, but it turned out Lisa's ghostly powers were nearly as good.

With everyone on standby for their signal, Len and Lisa had gotten as close as they could to the warehouse without being seen.  When they were hidden across the street Lisa had said she was going to check things out and shimmered into invisibility. It was full dark by then and the large bulky frame of the building was nothing more then a darker shape in the gloom. This area had been mostly abandoned, streetlights were few and far between, what light they did provide was a sickly orange.

Len waited. 

He trusted his sister. Sure she'd made her token arguments along the way, but even if she'd be inclined to sell him out on a regular deal, there was no way she'd sell him out to aliens. That didn't mean it wasn't longest four minutes of his life. 

A faint glow gave him a heads up before she fully manifested. "What's the scene?"

Lisa glanced back at the enemy stronghold then gestured Len a little farther back into the shadows. "There's about sixteen of them. The main floor of the warehouse is pretty open I think there used to be machinery but it's gone now, just a few short platforms. There are a whole set of catwalks on the second level, that's where most of the aliens are. They've got some kind of patrol, but I don't think it's a regular one. There are three entrances: The front entrance across the way, a big set of loading doors around back and a set of side doors. There's a pair of guards stationed by each. The machine is in the center of the room along with some more equipment, I couldn't tell what it did. Your heroes are all grouped around, completely out of it. There were three more Dominators keeping an eye on them, or maybe one and a pair of scientists or leaders or something. They had this band on their shoulder." She drew her hand down her own shoulder to illustrate.

"No guards outside?" Len had to confirm. Lisa nodded. 

Len tapped his com, "Tell Wally to start running." 

The reaction was immediate.

The formerly quiet neighborhood rang with a low hollow cry. Len couldn't tell if it was organic or machine made. He was looking straight at the warehouse and it still couldn't tell where exactly it was coming from. 

The air thrummed, a wave of invisible force rolling over them. The light Lisa was emanating brightened for a moment as she tensed. Then there was a flash of lightning and Len had to grin.

"Flash is coming your way." He said into the coms. As he spoke, a red and blue blur zipped by overhead, and the sounds of engines could be heard from behind the building. "And here come the rest of them."

"Got it," Cisco acknowledged.  

"Side door?" Lisa asked.

Len nodded and followed her around the building. It wasn't quite like the heists he remembered pulling with her in his other life. Every ten feet or so she'd slip sideways through the wall and check if there were any guards on the other side. She didn't look to him to lead the way or defer to him. She might have agreed to work with him, but it was only business. Len forced himself into the same mindset. 

The side door was locked, but it was a simple matter to pick it. The inside was dark except for Lisa's faint light, which she had dimmed as much as she could. From what he could tell the side door let him into a break room type area. Or it would have been a break room if the building was still in use. A few small, thin walled offices lined the back wall blocking Len's view of the warehouse floor, and conveniently blocking their view of him. Otherwise this small corner only contained a pile of packing crates. 

Len drew his gun pressing himself against the wall, before slowly glancing around it. The larger space was just as dark, except for the lights the device gave off. He held as still as he could, glancing around with only his eyes. He was looking for movement, the aliens had to be somewhere, but unless they were all pressed against the walls waiting for him to stumble into the center of the room, they weren't there. Len drew back and turned Lisa. She was giving him an expectant look from deeper in the shadows, her hands on her hips. 

"Well?" she whispered.

"Trap," he whispered back.

"Or they could be back in their ship, or fighting our other team or distracted by our distraction, or did you forget that was kind of the point?"

He scowled at nothing in particular. She did have a point but... "Cisco, status."

Cisco's voice came back louder then Len would have liked, and covered in static. "It's working, we haven't gotten our buts handed to us yet. Now stop distracing me and get on with it." The connection cut off abruptly.

Len hissed out a breath through his teeth. Well, all plans went off the rails at some point.

He spun around the corner at a run, gun up, already aiming for the device. For a fraction of a second he expected the aliens to pop out of nowhere and shoot at him. Then he pulled the trigger. The beam of super-chilled air hit a wall two feet from the device, splashing off it like a wave against the rocks. Len skidded to a stop a second later trying to see what he'd hit.

There was some kind of forcefield around the device, and if it could stop his cold gun it had to be able to stop little things like bullets.

"Lenny!" Lisa's yell came a second before dove in front of him, ribbons flying through the air. She was using them to stop some kind of laser blast. The missing Dominators had arrived. 

There were five of them, one with the special stripes that Lisa had mentioned. It looked like they'd been up on the catwalks, but now that they knew there were intruders they were converging on Len and Lisa's location.

Len waited to the first split second gap in the enemy fire. He stepped around Lisa adjusting the settings on the cold gun. Lisa could apparently stop lasers but he wasn't so sure about Alien monsters. His wall of ice stopped them cold.

"The device!" Len snapped over his shoulder. The Dominators were already hammering on his wall. Lisa's light flared as she moved. Len added another layer of ice. He really hoped the force field wouldn't affect Lisa. He had a few ideas on that front but he couldn't try any of them while keeping the wall up.

Behind his ice one of the dominators said something in their guttural alien language. Len missed Barry. It was a lot harder to come up with good comebacks when you didn't know what the other person had said. 

Lisa screamed.

Len spun on his heel before he could consider the consequences. Lisa was next to the machine, inside the forcefield. She had her hands forward reaching for it or around it, but her head was thrown back the scream ringing endlessly from her lips. Her ribbons were lashing the air. He couldn't get close. 

There was a crack as his ice wall shattered under superhuman strength.

Len wasn't young anymore, and while the body he had now had suffered fewer injuries, the turnabout was that it didn't have years of muscle memory to back up what he remembered. the wall came down, and he just couldn't move fast enough. Pain lanced across his back, the fabric of his parka shredding down to the leather he had under it. 

Len staggered. He landed on one knee, hands out to catch himself. A shadow fell across him. Len shoved himself to the side as a scaled fist hammered into the space where he'd been. He fired without having a chance to aim. the wide blast must have done something if the cry was any judge.

Curling into himself Len spun the settings over to an area effect and unleashed a frozen hell. Around him the air cracked as the temperature plummeted. He let out a breath of relief and saw it puff up before his eyes. Not even Flash could survive these temperatures for long. The dominators may have been more than human but they were still flesh and blood.

Len looked up and realized just how close he'd come. The nearest dominator was barely six inches away, it's wrinkled yellow skin covered in a layer of ice. Len grins. IT's so tempting to reach out and shatter the monster with the flick of a finger but he knows from experience that dominator isn't frozen solid yet. Humans can survive a surprising amount of flash freezing, and if the Denominators are as tough as they are strong, well... Len doesn't want to take any chances. 

He measures the safe zone carefully through his goggles before taking a single step out of the dominator's reach. A Glance around shows that he caught four out of the five. The last dominator is nowhere to be seen. It's unsettling not knowing where an attack might come from, but there's an even chance it went for reinforcements or is hiding in the shadows. Len doesn't have time to figure out which.  
  


The device is exactly where he left it. Lisa is not. Len hadn't registered when her screams had stopped. He barely looked away for a moment, but now she was gone. Worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind. Had the device done something to her? Had one of the other dominators gotten her before he could freeze them? Did the missing dominator have her even now? Or, the worst option of all, had it been him? She wasn't properly human anymore. Had her spirit been ripped apart by his Cold-field?  
  
Shifting the epicenter of the Coldfield far enough for him to examine where she'd been took far longer than he would have liked. It took minutes to cross half a dozen feet. Even when he was standing in front of the device he couldn't tell. There were signs of a struggle but he was standing in the middle of the battlefield, of course there were signs of struggle. He tested the air trying to tell if the force field was still on, but he'd lost track of how far it'd been from the device. He couldn't just blast it with the cold gun again without taking down the area effect.  
  
Len growled under his breath measuring the shadows with his eyes and… The shadows. He snapped his head up and around. The dominators didn't need the same level of light that humans did to see, that much was obvious from how they'd set up this remote base. When they'd snuck in Lisa had been the brightest thing around. She was floating at the very peak of the ceiling, a silent ghostly figure. Even our hair and ribbons barely moved making it seem like she was as frozen as everything else.

"Lisa?"  
  
Her eyes slowly drifted downwards, unfocused and dreamlike. Maybe the Coldfield was affecting her after all, even if not as much as the others. He didn't understand how her powers worked after all. Even raw energy was affected by temperature to various degrees. 

He saw the moment her ribbons twisted into motion. The snakelike twist gave him just enough time to choose his next move. Nullifying the cold field, Len dodged behind the nearest of the Dominator ice-statues. The ribbons were slower then they should have been. They curled into the space where he'd been before retreating.  The air was frigid, cutting into his back where his parka had been damaged. It would take an hour or more for the area to even out again as far as the temperature went. 

Len glanced around the Dominator who was serving as his shield. Lisa had gone back to her silent hovering. Damn. It wasn't to hard to figure out that she'd been hypnotized somehow. It made sense that she'd try to protect the device, lacking any other orders. Back to plan A than: try to destroy the device and hope it freed everyone. The force field was a problem, but Len could think outside the box.

Watching Lisa carefully, Len stepped out of hiding. She turned to face him, but didn't immediately move to attack. 

"I'll get you out of this Lisa. I promise." He said, low and even. The only response he got was her ribbons starting to curl again. Len stepped back behind his shield. This time the Dominator lost an arm to Lisa's ribbons. Len watched it shatter with a calm satisfaction. This was going to be fun.

The device was good as far as it went but it clearly couldn't access the hypnotised person's full potential. It was almost easy to lure Lisa into a pattern. Pop out of hiding, say something snappy, then duck behind another Dominator. Sometimes the Dominators took the attack, sometimes they didn't. Len didn't care much either way. All the while Len was judging angels and support.

The last of the Dominators shattered, and Len spun away, pressing his back to one of the pillars that supported the catwalk. It wasn't as good a defensive position but it did provide some cover.

"Come on let's wrap this up." Len called loudly, and Lisa attacked, just like he knew she would. The super-chilled metal didn't just break it shattered with a twisted shriek. Len had underestimated the force of it, rolling as the shockwave threw him to the ground. He was close, one more, maybe two and everything would be over.

So of course the guttural tones of the final Dominator had to echo out of the darkness. 

"Kill the intruder."

Len tried to find where the alien was hiding but Lisa was on him before he could do more then glance around. She dove out of the rafters like a shooting star, moving at least twice as fast as she had before. Len slid under her first volly. She didn't give him a chance to recover, and he'd used up all the easy cover in their previous game of tag.

"Now would be a great time to break their control," He prompted, but she just threw herself at him again, eerily silent. This time he only managed to dodge by a hair's breadth. His hand went to his gun on instinct. No he wouldn't shoot her, not even if it meant his life. Not even if it meant everyone's lives.

Len dove for cover again, sliding on the ice covered floor. He caught another pillar and swung around it, holding his breath. Would it be enough? Could he hold out a little longer? 

Lisa's ribbons curled around the steal support and ripped to shreds with another twisted shriek. She hovered over him. He couldn't get away. There was nowhere left to run even if he could have made it to his feet before she had him. He could still fire, but he wouldn't. 

The Dominator stepped forward, still mostly in shadow, it's eyes glowing, as light glinted off too many over-large teeth. Lisa raised a hand, preparing to strike. Len appreciated the dramatics of it. Not only was it a perfect display of her grace and control, but it also gave him an extra few seconds to say some final words.

"Good to know hypnotized people are just as dumb as the movies always said. My sister would have never fallen for the whole, take out the pillars to bring down the ceiling trick."

The Dominator's expression changed. Len couldn't read the alien expression, but if he had to take a guess he would have said it was confused. Possibly in response or possibly because she was fighting the control it had over her, she drew her hand back slightly. Her ribbons twisted around her, no longer focused only on him.

Len pointed at the ceiling where the catwalks were still screaming that twisted metal shriek. Somewhere a support crumpled. The lattice of catwalks over the warehouse floor fell as if in slow motion. Len had known it was coming and used the distraction for what it was. He pushed himself off the floor, aiming for the relative safety of the nearest concrete wall. Lisa would be safe. She could go through it, or it could go through her, but Len was confident the Dominator didn't have odds anywhere near that good. Once it was gone, Len could handle the device if it managed to survive. 

Of course there was a chance that the programming wouldn't break and he'd still have to deal with a homicidal Lisa, but he'd freeze that bridge when he came to it. Len ducked his head and hoped for the best.

It felt like an age before the creaking crunch of falling and shattering metal subsided. Len glanced up through the dubious shelter of his arms. The air glittered. Len followed the source of the light and found Lisa floating off to one side. She shook her head a few times, rubbing at her temples.

"Lise?" Len managed to croak out. The cold air made it sound hollow and directionless.

"Yeah, I'm back" She shook her head again then glanced around for him.

Len levered himself up, using the wall for support. "The Dominator?"

"Under that pile, I think," She gestured and he nodded.

"I assume the device is gone since you're back?" They both looked to where the device had been. There was a tangle of metal and part of the roof in it's place. Len brought up a hand, wincing only a little as he activated the com. 

"Ramon? Have we got our people back?"

There was silence on the line for a minute, then a burst of static as Cisco's voice came through, "Yeah, yeah, I think so. Hang on."

Len sagged back against the wall, then winced as new bruises made themselves known. Lisa drifted closer. She didn't have any trouble getting through the debris, but she started shifting it anyway, clearing a path to the exit.

"Thanks," Len said.

"Thanks for not shooting me," she said without looking at him.

Len tensed, "You remember?"

"Kind of, like watching a TV show, only i knew it was me and..." She shuddered and moved to shift some more of the collapsed structure. 

Len shrugged, deliberately making it a casual gesture, "Well, you're my sister." He stepped over the last of the iced... whatever it was and stumbled forward. He focused on his feet, giving whatever illusion of privacy he could.

Cisco reported in, "We're good. There was a troupe of Dominators as backup but we handled it. We've got our people back. Do you need backup?" 

"No, we're fine. We may need a clean up crew, some of the Dominators stuck around, but otherwise we're headed back."

"Rodger that. I'll pass word on to Argus for the clean up. See you soon," Cisco cut the line.

Len put his shoulder to the door, and headed for his motorcycle. In that moment he wanted nothing more then to lie down and sleep, but the fight wasn't over yet, they'd won the battle, not the war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I wanted to finish up Inheritance, which is now fully posted, Yay. I've also been working on my Pod-together projects and podfic big bang project which are all going to be amazing, so keep an eye out for those in the next few months.  
> ^_^


	21. Chapter 21

  
Len left Lisa at the front of STAR labs. There was obviously something happening inside, something about Team Arrow. At this point Len was very tempted to say he didn't care. Instead he took a moment to wheel his bike around to the back lot. The world wouldn't end if he took five minutes to himself.

He slipped in the back door once the night air had dried the sweat from the fight and the cold residue had evaporated from his parka.

He started for the cortex, taking the long way so he could swing past the kitchen for some coffee. Lisa would have told Barry where he was. He had to assume that the reason Barry hadn't come to find him was because there was still something more pressing to deal with.In which case the coffee would definitely be needed.

Len dropped his parka over the back of one of the chairs. There was a half full pot already made, because scientists seemed to live off the stuff. He grabbed one of the spare STAR labs mugs, and had just finished pouring when the grunt came from the doorway.

"Oh,"

Len glanced over his shoulder to confirm what he suspected. It was Mick. Not the Mick he'd spoken to in the last few months, this was the version of Mick that had been traveling with the Legends. He had his jacket on but open, over a white wife-beater. The heat gun was in his leg holster, a match to Len's own. The most telling bit though, was his expression. This was the Mick from his dreams, the Mick who had been beaten down to the breaking point.

Mick looked him over, then glanced away, and Len got it. Not only was this the Mick who was constantly harassed by the Legends, he thought Len was the time traveling version who had been gaslighting him.

Len carefully put the coffee pot back in place, his mind racing.

He could tell Mick the truth. He could spill the beans right now, tell Mick he was alive and that the other him had been plucked out of the past, for the sole purpose of pushing his buttons. Len could tell Mick what he knew about the spear and where the blood was hiding. He could stop the Legion of Doom from ever creating their fantasy world.

Except...

Jax and Lily were from a world where the Legion of Doom had never completed the spear, and from what he understood it was far worse then what Len's dreams had been showing him. The heroes might have been killed off for sport in that universe, but most of the population had still been alive. The Legends were still alive.

Was that what the Captain had meant, when he'd told Len not to let the Legends know about him? That losing the battle was the best way to win the war? The Legion was certainly arrogant enough if they kept the Legends around as pets. Even a crippled enemy was dangerous, sometimes more so than before. 

Len had seen Mick turn on his past self. If Mick rejoined the Legends with his full memories, Len had no doubt that the team would find a way to win.

But it all hinged on Mick's betrayal.

Could they do it without? Coult Mick play the part well enough to fool not just the Legion but his own past self? That kind of pain and betrayal wasn't something to be thrown around casually but it wasn't the kind of thing you could really fake either. They'd have to tell Sara at least, if not the whole team, in order to plan it out properly, and... no. Mick probably could fake that kind of betrayal, but the other's couldn't. Ray certainly couldn't. Stine would bluster and babble. Then there were the newcomers...

Len drank down some of the lukewarm coffee and swallowed a mountain of guilt and regret with it. The Captain was right. He had to play this out.

He turned. Mick was still standing in the doorway. He was mostly looking at the coffee pot and the fridge, but Len was blocking his path in both cases.

"So, what will it be? Drowning away your sorrows or stay awake, to help the people who will never thank you for it?" Len plastered on a snear and shifted to lean against the table instead.

Mick hesitated. He glanced at Len, then determitedly away again. "Shut up." It was half hearted, and that only Len hate himself a little bit more.

"You know it's true." Len said, trying to make it sound offhand. "Did any of them ask if you were okay? They all know about the time masters brainwashing. Hell they should have asked anyway. Just checking in, everyone okay? to injuries after the fight...?" He trailed off. A part of him was genuinely curious. Cisco hadn't been very detailed when filling in him and Lisa. If there had been some major injury on the team it might genuinely explain the lack of consideration.

Mick went for the coffee. Not a good sign normally. Mick didn't handle stimulants well, they tended to aggravate his anxiety. 

"They're busy." Mick grunted.

No doubt they  _were_  busy, and normally Len would have given them some slack since they were all coming out of being brainwashed too. Plus there was still an invasion going on.

Instead he said, "So they're all fine with you taking a break then? They do know you're back here right? Or were they too distracted to even notice you wondered off?"

With his back still towards Len, Mick slammed an open hand down on the counter. The clap was startlingly loud, making the cups lined up in the dish drainer rattle against each other.

"Least I'm still here," Mick's voice was barely above a whisper and shook almost as much as the cups. "Those damn Dominators took Sara and Ray and all of team arrow. Everybody going on about how it's cause they're human, but I was right there and the Dominators didn't take me. Can't even help get 'em back, cause we don't know where they are yet." By the end Mick was clearly talking to himself more than Len. His fingers had curled around his cup of coffee, like the heat coming off it was the only thing he could focus on. 

Sara and Ray... Len hadn't known. And they were two of the people most likely to comfort Mick, to know what he was going through. The Captain had said not to worry when Team Arrow was taken, but that had been before everyone had been hypnotised. Len desperately wanted to storm into the Cortex and make sure everyone was doing their jobs. They would find Sara and Ray and the rest of them and stop this damn invasion once and for all. 

Except he'd already made his choice on that front when he'd decided not to tell Mick the truth.

Mick turned, his expression distant. "We're gonna' get 'em back."

Len knew exactly what he had to say even if he hated himself for even thinking it. "Of course, you're nothing but their faithful dog after all. Maybe they'll even pat you on the head before they go back to ignoring you."

"They don't ignore me."

"No, they use you. Just another thug, never mind that you helped with every plan I ever made. Never mind that you know more about people then most of them know about fighting or science or whatever. You go right ahead, get them back and see if I'm wrong." Len stood, grabbed his jacket and saluted Mick with his coffee. 

He managed not to break character until he was several steps down the hallway. Then he slumped against the wall, trembling. He pushed open the nearest door. It led to some disused office or lab he couldn't tell in the gloom. It didn't matter. The cup tumbled from his hands, clattering against the floor tiles and creating a spreading puddle at Len's feet as he slumped against the wall. He heard footsteps in the hall and shoved his fist into his mouth to keep back any cry or warning. The footsteps slowly faded back towards the cortex.

Len slid down the wall. He'd learned how to cry silently a long time ago, but he hadn't needed to use the skill in recent years. 

He was terrible. He was a monster. Just as bad as his past self. Just as bad as the Legion for twisting everything, and the Legends for being too caught up in their own mess to see the truth. Worse, because he'd known exactly what he was doing. Gaslighting a friend, manipulating him, cutting any shred of self-confidence out from under him and pouring salt into open wounds. At least the Legends had the excuse of ignorance. This was worse than the fire. How would he ever be able to apologise? He'd let Mick beat him up in a heartbeat, and say thank you afterward if that was all it took.

He sat, shuddering there in the dark for a long time.

The hand on his shoulder came as a surprise. Len looked up, blinking through the gloom. Barry, it was Barry, still wearing the Flash suit, but with the hood pulled down. His hair was a mess. He looked as exhausted as Len felt. He'd been hypnotised too, Len abruptly remembered. He clutched at Barry, examining every inch he could see, for any sign of injury. The uniform was scuffed in places, but there was no blood.

"Are you okay? I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I know you didn't want to fight us, it's not your fault." The words he'd wanted to say to Mick came pouring out of Len's mouth.

Barry shushed him, "Hey, easy, I'm okay. You got me back. Cisco told me how you totally took charge around here. It must have been amazing. I'm totally okay now. Are you okay? I've been looking for you..."

Len took a shuddering breath. "I-- No, I had to--" his throat closed on the words. He was shuddering again, he couldn't seem to stop it. Barry knelt next to him, pulling Len half into his lap and whispering soothing nonsense.

"It's okay. We all made it. I'm safe, and Lisa's safe and everyone else. You did it. It was enough. You can rest now."

Len pulled together the scattered threads of his control. His head was tucked into the crook of Barry's neck, breathing in the leather-sweat smell of him. It's a foreign feeling but a good one, Len hasn't had that many people in his life who ever offered him this kind of comfort. Eventually he pulled back, looking up at Barry. He wondered where this left them.

"Hey," Barry said.

Len shrugged, "Getting there."

"Okay. It's just past 2am. Everyone agreed to break for some rest while the computers run some programs. Can I take you back to your place?" 

Len both hated and appreciated how careful Barry was being. He nodded, and wrapped his arms around Barry's shoulders, as the world became a haze of static around them.

Barry sat Len down in the middle of his living room, and stood there awkwardly. "Didn't think seeing your bedroom for the first time would be like this." He let out a little laugh with no real humor in it. 

Len squeezed Barry's hand, "I'm not... interested in sex right now, but you could stay..." He really wanted Barry there with him. He'd survive letting go of that warmth and comfort but it would hurt. 

Barry squeezed back, wrapping his free hand around Len's wiest, "If you're sure."

"Please."

Barry leaned in, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Len sagged against him, and let Barry take care of the rest.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god this chapter was so tricky to write. Why are emotional scenes harder then action scenes?


	22. Chapter 22

Len would have really prefered not to dream, but apparently he didn't get a vote.  
  
His dream self walked down a corridor that might or might not have been in star labs. He was angry, that was the first thing that Len recognized, angry at Mick. What Len had done hit him all over again. He was no better than this younger, spiteful self. He hadn't learned a damn thing, still hurting the best and truest friends that he'd ever had. Maybe he deserved whatever agony he was being forced to relive.  
  
The corridors were dark. He didn't pass many people, and the few he did looked away rather than meet his gaze. His jaw throbbed where Mick had punched him.

Well, at least there was that. It might just be that the timeline hasn't solidified yet, but it looked like his talk with Mick hadn't stopped him from going back to the Legends. Small victories.

Len gave into the inevitability and focused on Lenny. He was apparently looking for the Legends. Not only did Nate have his memories back, but they had somehow tracked down Ray. Merlyn had sent Sara and Amaya after them, which Len could have pointed out was a bad idea even if it did have that kind of twisting the knife flair that Merlyn liked. Both women now had their memories back as well which left only the Professor and their precious Captain. 

Lenny stepped out onto the platform overlooking the labs. They were mostly empty at this time of night. The Professor was at his primary workstation. Thon was behind him, rubbing his shoulders in a mockery of support. Thon was over-acting again.

Lenny had seen the huge pit in the center of the room before, but it had never been turned on. He wondered distantly what it was for. Some portal to another universe perhaps. That sounded like Thon, trying to overthrow more then one earth when he hadn't even properly overthrown this one. Jumping the gun like all speedsters.

He tuned and headed back into the complex before Thon could notice him. He was nominally allowed to be there, but Lenny preferred to keep his sneaking around under wraps. In the background Len hastily memorized corridors and doorways.

Lenny slipped sideways into an empty office to avoid a patrolling guard, and waited a minute for them to pass. With Thon keeping an eye on the Professor that left Rip. He headed for Thon's office. Len recognized it from his previous dreams, but couldn't match up Lenny's thoughts of Rip with the room. Lenny's eyes trailed over the modal ships until they landed on the Waverider. 

Lenny stepped up to the modal, crouching a bit to put it at eye level. Len realized with distant shocked horror that it wasn't a modal it was the real thing, shrunk down. Ray could probably fix it if he had his technology, technology that didn't exist in this timeline.

"Well Hunter, One way or another this will all be over soon."

Len felt Lenny argue with himself, steal the Waverider or not? He could do it without question, but if he ran into Thon on the way out it could cause problems. He wasn't ready to face Thon, not yet...

There was a faint buzzing in his pocket. Lenny straightened fishing out a phone. Len recognized the code even if he didn't know the number the text belonged to. It was a system he and Mick had worked out early on. A meet-up location and a time - two hours from now.

Lenny grinned, "Looks like I wont need that tracker after all. Good old Mick." He turned, leaving the Waverider where it was.

The meeting spot was a parking garage on the edge of down town. It took Lenny less then twenty  minutes to get there, scope it out, and confirm that Mick hadn't arrived yet. He parked his bike in an obvious spot and went to watch the entrance from one floor up. Mick arrived ten minutes before the deadline, parked a car that Len assumed was stolen on the street where it would get towed in a few hours and headed inside on foot. Lenny hadn't thought it was a trap, but it was good to see Mick was alone.

Lenny headed back to his bike. The floor they were on was empty except for a few cars parked against the edges of the room. Mick headed straight for him. Lenny opened his mouth to say something snappy. There was a flash of distant pain, and the world went black.

Len woke in his own bed, with morning light filtering in through the curtains. He knew where he was but it still felt strange. There wasn't usually an arm thrown over his chest or a fluff of auburn hair tucked up against his shoulder.

He looked over at Barry Allen. He was more relaxed then Len had ever seen him, all the buzzing energy of the Flash, the intensity with which he looked at the world, tucked away. Len could imagine him groping for the alarm to turn it off, moaning for just a few more minutes sleep. He could picture Barry in his kitchen, still half asleep as he fumbled through making coffee. He probably liked big breakfasts, especially on the weekends.

Len thought about lazy morning sex and kisses as they got ready for work, and realized he could see it. He'd never been able to picture that kind of domesticity with anyone before. Even Mick, back when they'd tried things that first time around. They'd been partners, but the live fast die young type, not the I want to grow old with you type. Barry, Len knew, gave his whole heart to the person he was in love with. For Barry there would never be anything else.

Len wanted that.

He leaned down and lightly kissed the curve of Barry's cheekbone. Barry shifted and nuzzled into his shoulder. Barry took a deeper breath and blinked open his eyes. He looked up at Len blinking those bright green eyes, then smiled.

Len's heart skipped a beat. God he was so in love with this man. How had Len managed to get away with this? How had he possibly stolen Barry's heart, because he certainly hadn't earned anything this good.

Barry leaned up and brushed his lips over Len's, "Good morning."

Len swallowed and finally managed to find his voice, "Morning." Len wasn't sure what to do next. His revelation had frozen him in place. Should he kiss Barry again? Go down on him? Should he say it? Was that too much, too fast? What if Barry wasn't there yet? What if Barry wasn't there at all, sure things had been going well, but Barry was the Flash, a hero, and Len was... 

Actually Len didn't know what he was right now. Not a supervillain, not a hero, not a Legend. Was that something he wanted to put on Barry? There was still an alien invasion going on. Barry should be out there, fighting the good fight, bringing the team together, not looking after him like he was some kid home with the flu. 

"Len?" Barry sat up a bit more reaching up, his fingers tracing over Len's arm, "You feeling any better? You still look..."

Len shook his head and put on a smile, "just thinking about things. I heard the Arrow team was taken..."

Barry nodded, "Yeah, you were pretty close to Sarah weren't you? Don't worry we'll get them back. Cisco's probably figured out exactly where they are by now. By the time we get back to the lab everything will be set up." Barry stood and started looking around for his clothes.

Len sat up, pulling the sheets up around his waist. He'd told Barry some of what he'd seen in his oculus vision, but not everything. Barry might understand if he said he had to hide, but he might say they should trust their friends. He looked down at his hands.

"Barry?"

"Yeah?" He had found his pants and was sniffing at his shirt to see if it was clean enough to wear.

"I-- I can't go with you." 

Barry sat down on the edge of the bed, "What do you mean?" He looked confused, lost maybe. At least it was better than betrayal.

Len started twisting the sheets between his hands. Barry lightly touched one of his wrists and Len gladly grabbed his hand instead, twining their fingers together. "They need you. I know that, and we've talked about it before, but I... Last night was a lot for me. I might remember this kind of thing, but I haven't actually..." He stumbled over his words, trying to find something that Barry would understand. He didn't want to push Barry away, not really. Not even if his revelation terrified him.

"Okay," Barry said. "Yeah, I get it. You've already done so much. You warned us about the attack in the first place and you got us back. You can take the day off. Who knows maybe you'll need to swoop in and save me again." He squeezed Len's hand and smiled.

"I'd prefer not to make a habit of that, if it's all the same to you," Len said.

Barry leaned in and tugged Len into a soft kiss. "You're sure it's just that? There's nothing else I can do to help?"

Len shook his head, "You're doing enough already, I need to work this out on my own.

Biting his lip, Barry nodded, "I- Can I call you tonight?"

Len nodded at once, "Yes, please do."

Barry looked at him for another minute, then blurred. Len felt a light pressure on his lips again as the air in the room whipped around and then stilled. Len flopped back in bed. He didn't have any plans for what to do next. He didn't even know what day of the week it was. He felt disconnected from his own life; which had been fine when his life consisted of heists, moving from hideout to hideout and the occasional beer run, but not now.

He got up and took a shower. When he got around to checking his phone he found out it was a Wednesday, but the office chat told everyone to work from home if they could. Upper management and the local news was predicting a large battle in the middle of the city after all the spaceship activity of the last few days.

Len logged in to the network, answered some emails and tried to focus on getting some work done, but it was a lost cause. By one in the afternoon he'd only managed to frustrate himself and probably the rest of the people on his team. He'd tried working up a proposal to fix STAR labs but that only made him think of Barry and what the heroes were probably doing right now. In a last desperate effort to clear his head he headed downstairs.

Except his motorcycle was still at STAR labs. Len clenched his jaw, then deliberately relaxed it.

Turning he started walking, not paying attention to where his feet were carrying him. The streets were quieter then they might have been in the middle of a weekday. The whole city was very aware of the threat from above. No one bothered Len, though he did get a few pitying or incredulous looks from people who hurried inside. He reached the river and walked along it until he found the spot of his fight with Barry after the bank. It felt like an age ago, he'd learned so much since then.

He hadn't known about the Aliens then, or that Jax was Alchemy or any of the rest of it. It had all been so much simpler, like things had been in the beginning in the other life. Just a diamond heist and a new challenge, no time travel, no threats to the world.

The railing seperating the park from the river hadn't been repaired yet. There was caution tape up and a clumsy chain link fence. Len tipped his head back and closed his eyes. 

He was in love with Barry Allen. He was the only one in the right place to save the whole of space and time from being rewritten. He'd already died once for a destiny he'd never wanted. Len had never wanted to be a hero, but he had wanted to live in interesting times. He laughed, letting the ragged sound into the world.

"Something funny?"

That was Barry's voice somewhere behind him. He wasn't all together surprised that Barry had come to check up on him, but if he'd left something important to run through the city they were going to have to have a talk.

Len looked out at the river, "The old curse; May you live in interesting times."

Barry stepped up beside him, "Ah, yeah."

Len started to turn, and froze. It wasn't Barry standing beside him. Well, it was, but it wasn't. This man had a scar marring the side of his face, and eyes that were as cold as Len's ice. He was wearing a black jacket with blue trim, and for some reason the lack of his normal red was more shocking then his appearance. Len's mind provided the obvious answer, the words tumbling from his lips.

"You're Savitar."

He nodded then shifted to meet Len's gaze head on. "Can we talk?"

Len considered everything Jax had told him about Savitar, everything the Captain had said about Savitar, all the dangers a rogue speedster could pose. Then he thought about Barry, waking up in his bed and kissing him good morning.

Len nodded, "Okay."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so tempted to make this go into a sex scene but then Len started freaking out *headdesk*  
> Anyway for those of you who were looking forward to Savitar, here he is finally. :)


	23. Chapter 23

Savitar offered a hand, and Len felt like he was moving in slow motion as he took it.

The world blurred, full of cold blue sparks rather then the usual cheery yellow. Len hadn't needed a reminder that this wasn't his Barry (he'd already gone through it with Mick and Lisa and everyone else in his life) but once again he didn't get a choice.

Len wavered on his feet when they came to a stop. They were in a house with an open layout, hardwood floors, and fixtures that had been extremely expensive a few years ago. The architect in him noted the floor-plan and wheelchair accessible doorways. The thief in him noted the marble and automated systems. This house had been build deliberately, with purpose and forethought and a lot of money.

"Where are we?"

"The former home of one doctor Harrison Wells, also known as Eobard Thon, and the Reverse Flash." Savitar stepped past Len, into a kitchen and got a bottle of water out of the fridge. He slid it across the island. Len noted it was sealed as he picked it up. Not that he didn't trust Barry but, there was a difference between trust and reasonable caution. 

"I was told not to trust you."

"Jax?" Barry nodded, "I knew Len sent him and Lilly back, but i wasn't sure to when."

Len opened the bottle and took a drink, buying time to think things through. What did he actually know about Savitar? Jax had said Savitar was evil, they were hiding from him because they were sure Savitar would kill them. And Savitar had definitely killed people. Len hadn't given it much thought but the whole Alchemy mess had started with that right? Jax and Lilly were giving people powers for the fight ahead, and over half those people were killed less then two weeks later. It was a sensible theory to assume the speedster who was going around killing people was the same one they had been fighting in the future. Simplest answers were most often the correct ones and all that. But wouldn't they have recognised Barry?

"Jax thought you were Thon."

Savitar nodded, "He had this suit of armor to channel the spear's power through him while he ran. Len, my Len and I tricked him, and I was able to phase through it, pushing him out. I killed him, but by then we'd-- I'd already lost."

"I don't understand."

Savitar looked him in the eyes. In that moment Len could have never mistaken him for Barry. His eyes were haunted, the scar on his face standing out sharply against skin that was too pale.

"I pushed Thon out of the suit. It was me and Len. We were the last ones left, but we'd crippled the Legion's time machine so we thought we could mitigate the damage if we could just get rid of Thon. I pushed him out, but the suit, the system locked up around me. it took three whole seconds for me to bypass it so I could move again. In that time Thon grabbed you and ran. He held you against eh bleeding edge of the speed force and let it rip you apart atom by atom. I wasn't fast enough to stop it."

Len closed his eyes. He could almost picture it. Being torn apart all over again, like the Oculus, but this time he didn't have a choice. He shivered. 

"After that... I knew Jax was trying to change the timeline. It was the only chance I had to try and get you back, so I went to earth two, and watched the timeline changes from there. I saw the people Jax gave powers too. So many of them joined the Legion, either because they wanted something or someone was blackmailing them, some of them just enjoyed the pain."

"That's why you killed them."

Savitar nodded. "But you changed things again with the dominators. I don't know what's going to happen now..."

Len put the bottle down, and leaned forwards elbows on the countertop. "I'm surprised you didn't just jump forward again to see what the fallout is."

Savitar lifted a hand, then let it fall, "The timeline is still in flux. If I went now I could end up in a splinter timeline and come back with bad information, or get stuck there, or..." He brushed it away.  
  
"So… You came to me?" Len asked. Savitar glanced at him then looked away. 

Len counted to three in his head and looked around again. If Savitar was living here he wasn't settling in. The kitchen was clean to the point of being sterile. There was nothing on the counters, spice racks, or cutting boards left out, no cooking oil or butter dish is tucked into the corners. Len wandered over to the doorway and glanced into the next room. It was the same. No magazines or books on the side table next to the couch. The cushions on that couch were set up factory perfect. It could've been a magazine cover. There wasn't even a remote for the big flat screen TV handy. 

Savitar was still, just watching him while pretending he wasn't. Barry was never still, always shifting from foot to foot if he was nervous, talking too fast and second-guessing, or taking charge and talking with his hands. The current stillness was wrong. Len came around the kitchen island, relieved when the other man didn't retreat. He wondered how long this man had lived like this, without connection. Since his Len had died, or was it before that? Since he started fighting the Legion…? And now he'd come to Len.  
  
Len took his hand and said, "talk to me Barry."  
  
Savitar shuttered letting out a harsh breath. "It's changed. You changed it somehow. Here the variable. I – I wanted to change it, but –" he bit his lip "I change it too much –" his voice trailed off.  
  
Len wanted to pull Savitar down on the couch top them together and ply him with hot chocolate until his boyfriend, his lover relaxed in his arms. He wanted to do for this man what Barry had done for him the night before. Was it cheating if it was the same person from a different point in time? He thought Barry would understand even if it was.  
  
Still holding Savitar's hand, Len stepped into card his free hand through Savitar's hair, "when's the last time you ate?" 

Savitar leaned into the touch, "I had one of Caitlin's energy bars about an hour ago. I'm fine."  
  
Len shook his head, "I mean really ate. When's the last time you sat down to a meal? When's the last time you got a full night's rest?" He tilted Savitar's head up until he could look the man in the eye. "You look like you're at the end of your rope, and trust me, I know what that looks like."  
  
Savitar closed his eyes, clenching his jaw. He took a deep breath then deliberately stepped back untangling his fingers from Len's.  
  
"You're not my Len, you don't get to play these games with me."

Len barely kept himself from flinching. At least he wasn't the only one who was having trouble with this strange dichotomy. He stepped back, doubling the space between them and looked away. HE crossed his arms, "Fine, you're the one who wanted to talk, so talk."

Savitar waited a deliberate beat, still as a stone before speaking, "I want to know what changed. Several weeks ago you accompanied the flash when he intercepted an argument with the rogues. This led you to meet the Golden Glider which in turn prompted you to recruit the Pied Piper and rob a bank. I expected everything up to that point. You didn't react to knowledge of the murders, you would've learned about those before the bank, so it's not something I did. Except after that word started to spread about Captain Cold. You wanted your name to be known. You never once mentioned that in the timeline I remember. You robbed the bank for your sister, but something about it changed this time around."  
  
Savitar had one hand pressed against the countertop fingers spread like he wanted to push his hand through the marble. His words stuttered bleeding together then slowing down again when he realized he was going too fast. It was almost like he was speaking to himself, a problem he'd gone over in his head so many times that he was going in circles.  
  
"I met alchemy that night." Len spoke quietly then winced at himself. He hadn't meant to reveal Jax's identity, but there was no way Savitar wouldn't pick up on it. He kept going hoping to explain before Savitar fixated on that one fact. "He dropped some hints about the future, and at that point I still didn't understand what happened with the oculus. I needed to know so I went looking for him. Except no one knew him or where he was so I had to make him come to me. Wally was the one who eventually found him. Wally has speed now, you probably know that already."  
  
Savitar nodded. It was clearly old news. "He won't betray me… Us."  
  
Len reached across the counter gathering up his water bottle and fiddling with the lid. When he spoke it was in short harsh sentences, pairing things down to the bone so we didn't have to think about the emotions that had flooded through him during the event. "He had a piece of the spear and used it to send me back to the oculus. I showed my past self, or another self, where to go. How to slip back into the timeline. A time loop, I freed myself." He took a long swallow of water, his mind already dancing over what happens next.  
  
Except Savitar spoke into the silence, "that should've happened later. My Len told me about that once. It didn't happen for him until after the invasion, when he rejoined the legends."  
  
"I was warned not to speak to the legends."  
  
Savitar looked at him eyes narrowed in thought or suspicion. "Did Jax tell you that?"  
  
Len fought the urge to look around the spotless kitchen, eyes counting the exits, and instead shrugged watching Savitar. "No I was told that by a version of myself in the oculus. Now that I have more information I suspect that was your Len. I've been calling him the Captain."  
  
Len had expected Savitar to go still again, but instead he vibrated in place. His hand on the countertop creating a single high clear note. "He's alive?" Savitar's voice came through the vibrations as if a dozen people were talking all at once.  
  
Len licked his lips and slowly nodded. "I don't know if he's alive in the traditional sense. He actually hinted that he was dead, but I think he's dead in the way I was before."

Savitar blurred in place again, then Len suddenly found himself with an armful of speedster. Savitar's face was tucked into his neck, the damp evidence of tears cooling his skin. 

"Thank you, Len, fuck... God Len, Thank you."

Len stroked a hand over Savitar's hair. It was longer than Barry's, but in that moment it was about the only noticeable difference between them. Len wrapped his arms around the other man, and pretend, for a few moments. Barry was waiting for him, but Barry didn't need him the way Savitar did right then. Not that Len wanted to see Barry broken but... It was nice to feel like he could give him something.

After a minute Savitar pulled back. He rubbed an arm across his face, unselfconsciously brushing away the tears.

"There's hope..."

"Yes," Len agreed, "I'm not sure how you'll be able to get him out of there, but it's possible."

"And there's hope for the future." Savitar met Len's gaze and for the first time since they'd met Len actually saw the light that Barry always had in his eyes. "You said he told you to stay away from the Legends? What else did he say?"

Len cast his mind back, trying to remember the exact warning. "He... He warned about the invasion first. Then he said Savitar-- no he switched it. I thought it was just two names for the same person, but he was talking about Zoom coming back to the past and messing with the timeline."

"I've prevented that possibility." Savitar said, nodding for him to continue.

"Then he told me about Doomworld. He said the Legends were already fighting the Legion of Doom, that the Legion was trying to use the spear of destiny to rewrite reality." 

Len ran his fingers along the veins in the marble. He could see it like a map, like a blueprint. His fingers itched for a pen. Why hadn't he ever written it all down? He needed note-cards, pins, tape. He wanted to lay out all the facts so he could see it and know that his wildly dancing thoughts made sense.

"The dreams, that's your Doomworld, but no. Not yours. It wasn't a war, it was--"

"Len," Savitar leaned over, getting in his line of sight without trying to stop his movements. "What dreams? Do you know something about the future?"

Len nodded, his movements jerky. "The future, yes, but not your future. Not mine either, my past. They took me out of time. The timeline has changed more then you know. It's--" His hands grasped at air. He didn't know what had changed. That wasn't something he'd lived through. He only had second hand echoes from Savitar and Jax. He knew that future was bad, but what the dreams told him might be worse. Could they loose the battle and still manage to win the war?

Savitar caught his waving hand and held it. "Len," he says again, "What do you know?"

Len takes a breath and starts talking.

He babbles, telling Savitar about all his dreams and suspicions and theories.  At one point he started to pace again.  Then he had to explain about Mick and his knees nearly gave out. They moved into the living room, sitting side by side on an overstuffed couch that feels too stiff to have ever been used. Len perched on the edge at first, gesturing at the air as if drawing on it. As if it was the map of lights in the oculous. 

Savitar watched, and asked questions when he needed clarification. He laid out the facts as Len described them. At one point Len realized that this was the detective in Barry, the CSI. It felt wrong to be discovering a new side to his lover when the man in front of him wasn't actually his.

He didn't know how long it was before he slumped back, his voice trailing off. The light from outside had faded a bit not full dark, but solidly evening. 

Savitar was staring at the blank screen of the TV. "I'm tempted to offer you my piece of the spear so you can go ask him more questions, but it's integrated into the armor."

Len twisted to look at the black form standing in the corner.

"I've got it set up to detect tachyon particles."

That sounded familiar but it took Len a moment to place it, "from a time traveling speedster."

"Yes. If I dismantle the armor, Thon could slip back and change something and I wouldn't be in a position to stop him."

"If you killed him doesn't that mean he can no longer mess with things?"

Savitar leaned back and sighed, "If only. By changing the timeline you and I have erased that whole future. Unless he dies in those memories of yours...?"

"No such luck." Len licked his lips. There was an idea right on the tip of his tongue, if he could only put it into words...

Before he could figure it out his phone buzzed.

"Expecting a call?" Savitar asked.

"Actually I am," He hit the answer button and leaned back, smiling. "Hello Barry."

Savitar nodded slightly, a wistful smile briefly crossing his features before he turned his attention back to his notes.

"Hey. This isn't a bad time is it?"

"Not at all. I was thinking through a problem, but I can take a break. Any luck with Team Arrow?"

"Yeah, yeah, they're back. Umm about that. There's been a thing."

Len didn't like the sound of that. "Another thing?"

Len heard Barry take a breath and let it out. "They've offered a truse. I go with them and they leave earth for good."

"Which of course you refused," Len said, Ice in his voice. If Barry was considering sacrificing himself just after Len had gotten him back, they were going to have to have words.

"Len, I-- It's the whole world. That ship over the city, there are dozens of them. If I don't agree they're going to drop a meta-human bomb. It'll wipe out millions. I'm not worth that."

Len rubbed a hand over his eyes. He didn't want to be having this conversation over the phone. He didn't want to be having this conversation at all but... He looked up and caught Savitar's eyes. 

"Okay let me just make sure I've got this straight. The dominators are offering to leave and you want to go along with it?" Savitar frowned, his head falling to one side. He shook his head. Len took that to mean that this hadn't happened in his timeline. No help there.

On the other end of the phone Barry said, "Look, I know we just started dating. I don't want to put anything on you. This way you can forget about me. Go back to your old like. You've got Lisa back now. You can do whatever you want. And Wally's got speed so the city will still be protected."

"Fuck that!" Len snarled, "You think I'd just forget about you? That would be impossible even if I--" for a moment the words stuck in his throat. he swallowed and forced them out. "Even if I wasn't falling in love with you." 

There was a sound, a little gasp of pleased surprise, echoed from both the phone and the man standing in front of him. Len closed his eyes and focused on Barry. Savitar wasn't his, not yet, and in any case, Barry was the one in danger.

"Sorry. I wanted to tell you in person, but well..."

"No, I-- Me too. I didn't want to pressure you or..."

"Instead you were just going to sacrifice yourself?"

"Len, I have to do this." Barry said. At least he didn't sound righteous anymore, just desperate.

"This is negotiation 101. Trust me even if you did hand yourself over they'd break their word. They'd be back and we would be down one of the world's strongest heroes."

Len could hear Barry breathing on the other end of the line, it was ragged. Len wished he was there, wished he could wrap Barry in his arms, cup his face and know that they would get through this together.

"You're not alone. You don't have to fight this war by yourself." Len said in a voice barely over a whisper. His eyes were forced open when he heard a thud. Savitar had a fist against the wall, face turned away so all Len could see was the scar.

"Barry I--" He wasn't sure who he was talking to anymore. it was all mixed up in his mind. Past and all the potential futures, What was the best thing to do here? He needed a plan he needed... Screw it. "Don't sacrifice yourself before I get there."

There was something that might have been assent from the other end of the line and he hung up before it could get any more complicated.

Savitar took a second to collect himself, then looked up at Len. He looked like he'd been put through the wringer, but his back was straight and he met Len's gaze without flinching. He still had Barry's eyes even after everything he'd been through.

"I can speed you there," he offered.

Len considered it, then shook his head. "No. They still don't know about you, and that gives us an advantage. I'll find a car, but... I have some ideas, how can I contact you?"

They exchanged numbers. It was a bit surreal, deja vu sneaking up on him.

"Can I take you back to your apartment at least?" Savitar asked. Len agreed. A minute later he was in his parking lot. He would slip upstairs, grab his cold gun and then find a car and head for Star labs. If someone saw him, well, he'd figure it out.

He never got a chance to go through with the plan because the Dominators dropped a bomb on the city before he could carry it out.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Savitar... was it everything you guys were expecting :)


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this chapter bumped the rating up. The sex is at the end of the chapter and you won't miss anything plot wise by skipping it if it's not your cup of tea.

Len watched the metal ceremony on the Star Labs monitors. 

He'd been caught in the streets during the big Dominator fight, occasionally seeing flashes of lightning as Flash or possibly Wally rushed past. He'd heard over the coms when the Dominators had dropped the bomb. Sara in the Waverider and Firestorm, had managed to stop it, Len wasn't quite sure how. After that the Dominators had all shrieked in pain and fled.

Len had sent Barry a stream of threatening "You better still be alive" texts. Barry had responded with a heart, a smiley face, and a lightning emoji. It made Len want to kiss him.

Then came the long two days of clean up, in which the world got over the fact that aliens were a thing. Considering they'd already accepted superheroes, Len was surprised it took the full two days. Len mostly stayed out of it. He met with Barry at his apartment, but avoided Star labs since he didn't know where any of the legends might be at any given time. The only reason he was at the labs now was because he was sure they'd all be receiving medals.

That and he wanted to get a look at Mick.

The other man didn't look any more broken then he had when Len had tormented him the other night, but that could just be a mask given they were in a very public situation. He accepted his pardon and metal with a stiff kind of grace, quickly stepping back for the next person in line. Lisa had earned a pardon as well for her part in the whole affair, but that wasn't part of the public ceremony since none of the Rogues were willing to renounce their criminal ways... Well, Piper maybe. he was still in negotiations with the state. Len wasn't sure how Lisa was responding to that. He was staying out of it for the moment. Lisa didn't hate him. He wasn't going to push too soon though.

On the screen, Flash stepped forward. He thanked the president and made a short speech about making the future brighter, together. Fifteen minutes later he got a text from Barry.

_We saved the world party, you sure you don't want to come?_

_Thanks but no_. He responded, Then tacked on,  _Don't tell the Legends I'm alive_. Just as a reminder. 

He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, hands running over his scalp as he breathed out slowly. This was a victory, he knew that, but everything about the last few days just reminded him that this was only step one. Even if Savitar wasn't a problem, Zoom could still show up at any time and then there was doomworld to consider. He hadn't had any more dreams the past few nights, well, nothing coherent at least.

He had written down everything he could remember, and he had a few ideas, but it still felt like he was grasping at straws.

_Getting drinks with Ollie, want to join us?_

When the text came in from Barry, Len sagged and gave in. If one night with his boyfriend would end the world it didn't deserve to be saved.

_Where?_

_That bar on 10th._

_see you soon._

The bar Barry had referenced wasn't one he had frequented often, but all bars were the same in some respects. Barry and Oliver were already there, out of costume with drinks set up in front of them. Len felt that flutter in his chest as Barry shook his head, smiling. He tipped his head back swallowing from his bottle. Len watched the bob of Barry's throat and felt an entirely different sort of flutter. 

Stepping forward, Len wrapped an arm around Barry's waist. Barry smiled in surprise, stretching up to steel a kiss.

"Hey, you made it!"

"Looks like it," Len agreed, sliding onto the stool next to Barry. He reached across his boyfriend, offering a hand to the other man with them. Oliver looked at the hand then his face and slowly took it. His grip was as firm as Len had expected. 

"Len, though I'm sure Barry already told you as much."

"I'm Oliver. I don't need to start with the shovel talk do I?"

Len smiled. "Trust me I've already heard it. Besides, I was with the Legends before all the time travel switched things up." No need to mention that he'd been recruited to the Legends because of his criminal aptitude. Better that this particular hero not know about that bit of the other timeline.

Oliver hesitated, "Oh really?" He glanced between him and Barry. 

Barry held up his hands. "Hey, Len was dead before Flashpoint. I'm counting that one as a win."

Oliver nodded slowly turning back to his drink. "So," he asked a few minutes later, "If you're a hero, why didn't we see you with all the aliens?"

"Oh I was there, I spearheaded the rescue mission when all of you were hypnotized. No offense to Barry's planning skills but attacking with everyone at once did rather leave you all vulnerable." Len signaled the bartender for his own drink.

Oliver smiled, or at least Len thought that quirk of the lips was supposed to be a smile. "He has always been one to run in without a plan."

"Oh my god, you two are ganging up on me now? You realize you couldn't save the world without me right?" Barry said, shaking his head.

Len pulled Barry against his chest, and whispered into his ear, "You realize we're in a public place and secret identities are a thing, right?" Barry shivered against him, making Len shiver in turn.

"Yeah, okay."

Oliver was watching them, his expression more considering then it had been when Len had first arrived. "Were you together in the other timeline?"

Len blinked in surprise, but it was Barry who answered.

"No. I mean we knew each other and... Well, we had worked together a few times. I trusted him--"

"Even when he probably shouldn't have," Len tossed in.

Barry laughed, twisting on his stool so he was more comfortable leaning against Len's shoulder. "I was still hung up on Iris. And then Len was away with the Legends so we never had a chance. Then I created Flashpoint and well..."

Len took pity and picked up the story. "Flashpoint was just enough for me to come back to life, or rather I was never dead. I thought I was going crazy, memories of a whole different timeline flooding my head. I went to Barry, and he remembered it too. As we worked out the details we grew close."

Oliver took a drink and slowly nodded, "I'm happy for you. The last time I saw Barry, well you weren't looking so good. You seem a lot happier now. more grounded."

Barry smiled, "Thanks. Things are looking up." Behind Barry's head Len grimaced and reached for his drink. He saw Oliver notice, and was grateful when Oliver didn't say anything.

The reprieve only lasted until Barry slipped away to the bathroom, then Oliver leaned in and asked, "Okay, what was that look?" under his voice.

Len had had time to come up with the shortest explanation he could get away with. "I got a warning about another threat and I'm still figuring out how to deal with it."

"A warning? Like the Dominators? Barry said you were the one to warn him about them."

Len looked down into his glass. "Like a time travel warning. It has to do with the Legends, but if they know I'm meddling it could change everything and then we'd have no idea what was coming."

Oliver nodded slowly. "Someone has to make the hard choices, even if people don't understand it at the time."

Len thought of Mick, and Barry and Lisa. He nodded, and emptied his bottle. He made up his mind, and pulled out his phone. He sent off a quick text, finishing just as Barry returned.

Barry wrapped his arms around Len's neck, a lazy smile on his face, "How about we get out of here, go back to your place?"

Len glanced up at Oliver who just waved them off.

"Yeah, I'd like that," he held up a hand before Barry could whisk them away, "but I'm not leaving my bike in the parking lot like last time."

Barry insisted on driving since Len had been drinking. Len didn't ask if Barry had the proper licence. If Barry's reaction time wasn't enough to save them from any potential crash then nothing was. Plus he wasn't going to say no to pressing himself up against Barry's back with what amounted to a giant vibrator under both of them. By the time they got back to his apartment Len was half hard. He wanted to feel Barry, wanted to taste his skin and watch his face as he came.

Barry was apparently on the same track, because as soon as the bike was parked he wrapped his arms around Len's waist. The world blurred around them, and Len's back hit the wall. They were in his apartment, the couch right next to them, the bedroom only a room away. Barry pressed his face into Len's neck, kissing up until he got to Len's ear.

"I want to fuck you," Barry's tone was wrecked. Len had to bite his lip to keep from moaning.

He'd thought about it. Of course he'd thought about it, having a beautiful young thing like Barry kissing him could give a man all kinds of ideas. Len certainly wasn't a virgin, but it had been a while and Barry caught that moment of hesitation.

He pulled back slightly, "Or, you could fuck me? I really don't care which way it goes. I mean, I'm fine with either. Or umm--"

Len kissed him to stop the babble. "You can fuck me, " He said when he pulled back, "I'll just need some prep, it's been a while." 

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can do that." Barry's voice had gone breathy again. "Do you, umm, supplies?"

"By the bed." 

Barry kissed him again, guiding him sideways until he could step back through the doorway. Only then did they break apart. Len pulled off his shirt, tossing it in the direction of the hamper, as Barry went to raid the bedside table. He came up with a bottle of lube and several condoms.

"I um, I mean, I can't catch anything, but --"

"I'd prefer to keep the condoms for now," Len said. With anyone else it would have been a demand, but Barry was once again the exception.

"Oh good," Barry breathed out, "I mean I trust you and I don't think you have anything or whatever but I kind of grew up with these horror stories from Joe and well..."

Len snorted, "That does sound like him, but if you don't mind I'd rather not talk about your father in the bedroom."

"Right." Barry tossed the supplies on the bed, and came back over to Len, hooking his thumb in his belt loops.

There was a moment where Len started to feel ashamed. In one life he'd done everything he could to hide the scars he'd collected. Except in the other life, this life, he had far fewer scars, and had never been ashamed of them. He had put those experiences behind him, and stood tall despite them. He didn't tell people about them, not the truth at least, but he didn't hide them either. He let the tension fade as Barry touched his chest.

"You going to show me what you've got Scarlet?"

Barry grinned, stepping back with a smile to strip off his own shirt. He ran a hand through his hair posing with the other hand on the button of his jeans. "Like what you see?"

Len nodded, licking his lips. "I always wondered what you'd look like under that uniform. not that it leaves much to the imagination but still.

Barry sat on the bed to remove his shoes, "You're one to talk. Do you have any idea how many fantasies I've had about that parka of yours?"

Len stopped in the middle of bending over to get his own shoes at the sight that brought to mind. Barry laid out on his bed, the parka wrapped around him with his hand on his cock... "Yes, we are definitely doing that."

"If we're going through fantasies, can I put you in cuffs too?"

"Don't push your luck," Len grinned, "Not on the first date."

Barry laughed, kicking off his last sock and stood. By then Len had his shoes off, and his pants open. Barry snuck in another quick kiss before pushing Len back to lie on the bed. He slid Len's pants off, leaning over to tease at the hem of his boxers. They were tented obscenely. Len shivered when Barry traced the shape of him through the fabric.

"Never thought I'd have to tell you to hurry up," he grunted. 

Instead of pulling his boxers down, Barry bent and sicked a mark into his hip. Len rocked his hips up in surprise and need. Dear god that mouth. He wanted that mouth on him, he wanted Barry in him and around him, giving him everything he had and the damn man still had his pants on!

"I swear to god Scarlet, you better hurry up or this night is going to be over a lot sooner than either of us want."

Barry pouted but stepped back, stripping off his own pants before tugging Len's boxers down. "Pass me the lube?"

Len handed it over and drew up his legs, spreading for Barry. It was obscene in all the best ways. His cock hard against his stomach as the Flash slicked up his fingers. Len did his best to relax. Barry was watching his face and stilled or slowed down if his expression even hinted at pain. They went slow enough that the urgency faded down to a pleasant warmth in Len's gut. At least until Barry found his prostrate.

"Oh fuck yes," Len gasped.

Barry breathed out harshly, "Len, you're so beautiful." he twisted his fingers again making Len shudder. "Do you think you're ready? I want to be inside you."

Len clenched experimentally around the fingers Barry had in him, three at the moment, and nodded. There might be a little bit of a stretch, but he'd always like that bit.

"Yeah. Yeah, fuck me." He lifted his hips, and wrapped one of his legs around Barry, trying to pull him closer. Barry wasn't exactly protesting. He shucked his boxers, the last piece of clothing between them, and reached for the condoms. Len hoped he remember the sight of Barry Allen rolling the condom onto his cock for the rest of his life. It was certainly a more beautiful sight then any of the paintings he had stolen.

Then Barry was pressing in, and lifting Len's hips, angling himself to press against Len's ass, and Oh. Len breathed out through the stretch, savoring the slight burn as he was filled.

"Len?" Barry asked, panting heavily.  

Len could feel Barry's legs clenching. He had to be fighting not to move, not to hurt him. It was kind and thoughtful, but unnecessary.

"Barry, if you don't start moving I swear to god--" 

The speedster let out a little laugh, and let go. Len wasn't normally all that loud in bed. He'd curse or murmur to his partner but he didn't devolve into moans or screams. Apparently having a living vibrator in his ass was his breaking point. He let out a sound he didn't know a human throat was capable of.

It was good, it was so good. The world narrowed down to Barry's touch, hands on his skin, and that hard slick length spreading him open. Barry was talking, nonsense words, praises, even as his hips shuddered. Len let his head fall back giving himself to the pleasure in the moment.

"Touch me, please, touch me." Len realized he was begging, but didn't have time to feel ashamed before Barry was doing as asked. He cried out again, his body seizing, thrusting up and letting go. Barry gasped and for a moment the vibration turned to burning, sparks dancing over his lover's skin. Then Barry took a breath and slumped, boneless, onto the bed beside him. 

"Well Fuck." Len said when his breathing had evened out a bit.

Barry giggled, and shifted enough to pull out. He dealt with the condom and fell back onto the mattress. He was smiling goofily as he curled up, throwing his leg over Len's hips and drawing them together.

"Hi."

Len snorted, "Hi? Don't tell me you're terrible at pillow talk."

"Only in the same way I'm terrible at regular conversation."

Len started to chuckle but it turned into a yawn. "Ah sorry. You wore me out."

"I guess that answers the 'was it as good for you as it was for me' question."

Len rolled his eyes, then let them close as he pulled Barry up against his chest. He nosed into the younger man's hair, and didn't fight it when sleep crept up on him.


	25. Chapter 25

The next morning was everything that Len could have wished for. Barry danced through his kitchen wearing only an oversized shirt of Len's They made bacon, then pancakes, and lightly argued over how much syrup was too much and if eggs should be their own food group. Len had already made up his mind about what he was going to do next, and he embraced every bit of domesticity he could get while it lasted.

Eventually Barry's phone buzzed. "Flash stuff?" Len asked.

Barry shook his head, "CCPD. Apparently someone thought looting a Best Buy during an alien invasion was a good idea. Possible metahuman so they want me to take a look."

Len stood and pulled Barry in close. "Well you better do that than." He kissed Barry lightly, enjoying the slight vibration under his mouth. "I'll see you at STAR labs later?"

"Sounds good." Barry answered with a smile, and in a whoosh of displaced air, he was gone.

Len took a slow breath and sat to finish his breakfast, mentally going over the steps to his plan.

Step one: Call his work and inform them he was taking an extended leave of absence for personal reasons. They would likely ask him to quit or dredge up some reason to fire him, but it had to be done. He'd already been walking the line between normality and the superhero world, that wasn't going to be possible going forward.

Actually it was odd. Talking with HR felt almost freeing. Before the memory glitch, losing his job and being forced back into the lifestyle he'd grown up in was a pretty big fear, now it almost felt odd trying to keep to a set nine to five schedule.

Step two: Call Savitar. The speedster agreed to meet him at STAR labs, and hear his plan. He was a bit shy about talking to Cisco bit Len explained that it was necessary.

Step three: Call Cisco and warn him they were coming and that they were going to need his discretion, at least where Barry was concerned. Len wasn't worried about Caitlin. She'd keep his secret.

Step four: Stop procrastinating.

He took one last look at his apartment before closing and locking the door. The ride to STAR labs was quiet. Savitar met him at the gates and followed him around to his normal parking spot in the back.

He strode into the cortex with Savitar a few steps behind him. Cisco glanced up, then back to his screens. Then he blinked and looked up again.

"Ahh, Barry?"

Savitar lifted a hand and made a so-so gesture. "A version from a possible future that looks like it may not happen anymore. Not your Barry in any case. I'm going by Savitar now."

Cisco reached blindly for the soda on the desk next to him, took a long drink then nodded. "Okay, I can roll with that. Are you like, sticking around or… I assume you're helping with the plan? What is the plan by the way, you were kind of vague on the phone." The last was directed at Len.

"I need two things from you, well three things really." Len waited until Cisco had nodded. "First I need your word that you won't tell anyone about this, not even Barry."

Cisco frowned, "Aren't you two dating now? Isn't that kind of… I don't know, shady? Unless it's some kind of surprise?"

"Not the kind you're thinking of, no. This is another save the world thing."

Cisco sighed out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, I promise not to tell anyone unless it turns into a life or death thing."

Len nodded, it would do. "Second I need something, a device, that will tell me when the timeline of another universe is changing."

Cisco took a breath, probably to ask why, then his brain started chewing on the problem. His hand came up to his mouth, eyes flickering over something only he could see. "Okay, yeah it's possible. I mean you couldn't record the frequency fluctuation from the inside but from the outside, yeah. Like a Geiger counter? No more like a seismograph, except with…"

"Cisco?" Savitar prodded softly.

He came back to himself and nodded, "It's take a bit to get a prototype and it'll be tricky to test it but I could work something out yeah. The third thing?"

"After the device."

Cisco shrugged, "Okay, you're on monitoring duty then while I get to work." He gave Savitar a rather stiff nod and headed for his workshop.

Len settled into Cisco's abandoned seat. looked over the system briefly then settled back. Savitar looked around. He trailed a hand over the desk, then meandered to the uniform case, the clear boards covered in math equations, the big monitoring screen. He let out a slow breath and turned back to Len.

"What are you thinking?" Savitar asked.

"At the moment? Whether I should grab coffee from the break room or go for broke and order lunch."

Savitar raised an eyebrow - giving him a look. It twisted at the scars and he stopped a moment later.

"About the plan…" Len bent forward, elbows on the desk and laced his fingers together in front of his mouth. "The Legion of Doom is going to win, but if my memories, or dreams, are right-- they're going to make a few crucial mistakes when they do."

"And you plan to-- What? Take advantage of those mistakes? How? If They've already won then the world has already lost, or been lost."

Len waved a hand in a so-so gesture. "Lost is relative. Your future is lost but you're still here. Your future was lost even before you came back into the past, even thought you were still fighting for it." Len hesitated, picking his words, "If Captain Cold was doing a heist and Flash stopped him, but Captain Cold got away, That's not a true loss on either part."

"You're splitting hairs."

Len shrugged, "Maybe, but the devil is in the details." He rubbed his fingertips together, "and there's… Well if they change reality then they're changing the timeline…"

Len glanced up at Savitar. The other man was standing in the middle of the room, hands on his hips. He didn't look like Barry, not really. His expression was too defensive. He looked threatening rather then inspiring. Still he was a version of the man Len had fallen in love with and if Len could give him this…

"It'll give you an opening to get to the Captain, Maybe even get him back."

Savitar dropped his hands, shock and hope going through his expression. "That's-- But--"

"Trust me?" Len asked.

Savitar closed his eyes, and slowly nodded, "okay."

It wasn't as simple as that of course. There was a meta attack that evening and Saviatar had to make himself scarce. Cisco got back to working the next morning. Len helped where he could which was mostly getting coffee and helping to test the prototypes or filling in on monitor duty when it was supposed to be Cisco's turn.

He talked with Caitlin a lot.

He got lunch with his sister.

He spent his nights with Barry, either curled up on the couch or bringing him take out at the lab. The West household seemed to have tentatively accepted him. It was good, but there was always that knowledge that it would end soon. Ironically that almost made it easier for Len to enjoy it.

Then Cisco walked into the Cortex at the end of a dreary Wednesday, and said, "it's done." He was holding up what looked like an older model phone. Len raised an eyebrow. Passing it over Cisco explained, "I needed a way to display the readings that wouldn't look out of place, it can still make calls too, but I wouldn't recommend doing much internet surfing because the scanning already taxes the battery pretty hard and it won't work if it's dead."

Len nodded and swiped the screen to unlock it. There were a few apps he recognised and one he didn't. clicking on it produced something that looked like a heart monitor. The line quivered occasionally but never went anywhere near the danger zone.

"Swipe left to see the list of earths. I already sent monitors to Earth 2 and Earth 27. If the timeline changed then the devices will either stop existing or end up on a different frequency, and either way this will pick it up."

Len nodded again. This was really it. He now had everything he needed. Last chance to bow out or tell someone the crazy thing he was about to do and let them talk him out of it. He thought of Barry. Then he thought of Savitar. He could remember the look on Savitar's face when Len told him there was a chance His Len was alive. There was no way he was going to let that happen to his Barry. Not if he could help it.

Len pulled out his own phone, and pulled up Savitar's contact. It's ready - he sent.

"What about this earth?" Len asked Cisco.

"What about it?"

"It this device monitoring this earth?" Len help up the fake phone.

"Well I guess it could, but it wouldn't do any good. If you're here then you'd change along with the timeline."

"I know." Len met Cisco's eyes without blinking. It took a minute, then Cisco got it.

"You're… what? Leaving? Why? What did you find out?" His hands were raised but he didn't seem to know what to do with them.

"Do you remember that third favor?" Len asked.

"I remember you asking me not to tell Barry, which right now is sounding like a stupid move."

"The third favor is you sending me to Earth 2 with one of those portal devises you gave Kara."

This time Cisco pointed his hand at Len in an attack pose. "So this next threat is big enough that you're just going to get out of here? That it? They said you were a bad guy, guess they were right."

Savitar was there before Len could respond, pushing Cisco's fist down to point at the floor.

"What the hell!" Cisco gestured at Savitar, then at Len. "Did you know about this crazy plan? Are you going with him? God you are, aren't you? Is that it?"

Savitar looked at Len, letting him be the one to answer.

Len took a breath, "If I tell you, you can't tell anyone or try to stop it. You have to understand - it probably wouldn't work…"

Cisco lifted his chin and glaired.

"If you don't help me I'll find another way." Len looked at Savitar, "Can you vibrate into another universe?"

"In theory. I have before but it would be trickier with a passenger, and aiming is always a bit questionable."

"Fine!" Cisco dragged his hand over his face, then back through his hair. "Just… Tell me you're not trying to hurt Barry."

"I'm not. I swear. I'm not going to run off with anyone, but someone needs to do this. I have the knowledge. Barry is needed here." He lifted a hand, then let it fall.

Savitar looked at Cisco, "Is that good enough, or do you want the details."

Cisco looked between the two of them, "You mean the details I'm not going to be able to share with anyone, no thanks. In this case I think I'd prefer ignorance. But you will be telling me what world you're in." He jabbed a finger at Len to emphasize his point.

Len glanced at Savitar, "Earth 2?" It doesn't actually matter to me, as long as it's not a wasteland."

"Better make it Earth 3. Jay will understand if we run into him."

Len nodded. "Earth three it is."

Cisco shook his head as he set up the phone to read their earth and. He was grumbling by the time he led them down to the breach room. 

"Anything you want me to pass on? Or are you just going to vanish without warning." 

Len looked up at Cisco. He could see how this would hurt the team, and Barry and Cisco was a part of that. He wasn't called Cold for nothing though, and this was bigger than one person, or relationship.

Cisco opened the portal. Savitar glanced at him then stepped through. It wasn't like it was a big deal for him. He could get back any time he wanted, no portals necessary.

"If they ask... Tell Barry I'm coming back. Ask him to trust me." Len knew it was a tall order. That was half of why he had to do this in secret. He shook his head, and turned to the portal, stepping through it and into another world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually had most of this chapter ready for a while. I don't really have an excuse for not posting it, except I've kind of been thinking of it as the beginning of the end and a big turn in the story. I'm still figuring out the details of the next arc. Some of the details that have been coming out as I write the next chapter surprised me so... Well, you'll see :)


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